Wolverines and street girls

G. George Ostrom

A recent issue of the Hungry Horse News contained a picture of the wolverine trap near Fishercap Lake. If you studied the inside of one, you'd have a good idea of how powerful those huge weasels are. The logs are seven to ten inches thick and many of them are chewed and clawed almost completely through. If the researchers don't get to the trap soon after a wolverine is caught, it might just tear the thing apart.

This year I've run into a young lady named Marcie Johnson several times as she wanders around the Swiftcurrent Valley keeping track of the wolverines that have been caught in the traps and implanted with telementry devices under their skin. Marcie usually is carrying a directional antenna to pick up signals, then where possible observe the animal through powerful binoculars. One day she was studying the northwest side of Allen Mountain and said she believed a female wolverine up there had some babies. If I recall correctly she said her study group headed by Rick Yates had trapped eight different wolverines in the Swiftcurrent Valley.

For whatever it is worth, I have walked hundreds of miles in that beautiful valley over the last forty years and climbed many of its mountains, but have never seen, heard, or even sniffed a wolverine one time. The three or four I've observed have been in the Logan Pass area. The latest estimate of wolverines in Montana is between 350 and 450. If biologists can catch eight in a valley where I've never seen one, maybe there are 10,000 in the state.

Sunday's Great Falls Tribune says we have more than 60 scientific research projects ongoing in Glacier Park right now. It said 10 are park-sponsored and the rest by independent researchers and government initiatives…whatever that means.

One of the studies which is obvious to many who drive over Logan Pass is on bighorn sheep because there are several rams up there wearing radio collars. That study is headed by Kim Keating for the Northern Rocky Mountain Research Center. It is in the third year of a five-year study. Part of any research on wild animals s analysis of their droppings (poo poo).

According to the Trib story, Keating said he was walking along a Glacier Park trail gathering sheep pellets (poo poo) and a passerby asked him if he was collecting "endangered feces". I did not make this up.

The third incident in the past year where a person was saved from a grizzly by the use of pepper spray was reported last week down at Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The 46-year old victim admits he was doing wrong by riding his bike alone in notorious grizzly country and not carrying the spray. He ended up with no serious injuries but his bike was damaged. Luckily, friends nearby heard him screaming and came to his rescue with the pepper canister. The other incidents were local, one this spring with a jogger near St. Mary Lake and the two ladies attacked in Glacier last fall. What's my point? There are still a few people using the backcountry who haven't got the message, "BEAR SPRAY WORKS".

Weather was lousy for hiking last Thursday but six or seven Over the Hillers made the 11-mile tour along the highline to Granite Park Chalet and down to the Loop on Going to the Sun Highway. I was in the arctic weather at Logan Pass with them but when they started putting on heavy clothes and wool caps I found something else to do. Have always been a "fair weather hiker" especially after passing age seventy. Elmer is eighty-five and he went but…I've wondered about him before.

The United States is not the only country with a bureaucracy beyond control. Such structures grow naturally in all free operating businesses as well as governments. The best way to live with bureaucracies to is to keep a sense of humor when you hear of some nutty thing they've done, and have a laugh.

Are you ready? The New Zealand National Government has issued an "Occupational Health and Safety Guide for Prostitutes". Maybe that isn't funny to some but it gets a little more humorous when we learn the guide is …100 pages. That's a lot of readin' while you're trying to walk the streets.

G. George Ostrom is the is the news director of KOFI Radio and a Flathead Publishing Group columnist.