Wolf-Ungulate Interactions and Trends within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem: East Madison Study Area

The East Madison (EM, also known as lower Madison) site covers 157 km² on a mixture of National Forest, state and BLM land and seven privately-owned ranches (CB, Elkhorn, Corral Creek, Carroll, Sun, High Valley, and Elk Meadows ranches). Most of the site is on private land. All of the landowners have provided access for research purposes and several support the project with funding and logistics. The site is a mixture of grassland and sagebrush grassland on low-elevation benches along the Madison River, small riparian zones, and coniferous forest on west facing slopes of the Madison Range. Elevation runs from 1736 m ASL to 2743 m ASL. This site is windswept for most of the winter, and accumulations of snow are low in comparison to our other study sites. In particular, the low-elevation benches are largely free of snow. Due to favorable snow conditions, winter forage for elk is more readily available than in our other study areas, and elk in the adjacent Wall Creek Wildlife Management Area maintain an unusually high plain of nutrition through the winter (Garrott et al. 1997; Pils et al. 1999). It is likely that elk on the EM site also face nutritional constraints that are less severe than on our other study sites (a subject we will examine in several ways, see below). There is both general and late-season hunting on the EM site. Few elk are on the site during the general hunting season in the fall, but 200 licenses are issued for a late hunt over 4 weekends in the winter. Typically, about 40-80 hunters take advantage of the late elk hunt on the EM site, with about 100% success, taking almost exclusively females and young (78 kills in 2001: 57 cows, 10 female yearlings, 11 calves).

Middle Fork Canyon in east Madison study area

The East Madison Site

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