Maurice Hornocker Interview, Part One Item Info
Topics:
Jack Kredell:So a lot of people who don't know anything about your work, your life's work or Taylor Ranch are going to see this. At least that's my hope, too, for for a younger generation of scholars, researchers, scientists and the general public to see these videos. And so maybe to begin. Could you just introduce yourself and say how you got involved with what became Taylor Ranch Wilderness Station?
Maurice Hornocker:Well, it goes back to my intern years with Craigheads, I suppose. Well, it's it does. I worked with John mainly for better part of ten years through my undergraduate and graduate work, and, and then moving on into the grizzly work and develop that love of the backcountry and big mammal research. He urged me to take this on and, and counsel that to do independent research, which he urged me to do.
I had to get the advanced degree and the Ph.D. So and he encouraged me to take on a difficult project because he thought I was probably capable of carrying it out. We looked at some projects in Africa, Alaska. None of them seemed to fit and the funding was questionable. And then just timing and luck plays such a role in most people's lives, and they certainly mine the opportunity here in Idaho.
And this mountain lion study came up and the director, Dick Woodworth, who was really responsible for bringing me the Idaho director, the Idaho Fish and Game, approached me about doing such a project here in Idaho. I was involved on a contract with John. I was his assistant at the Montana Unit at the University of Montana, so I had about ten months to do there.
So I did an exploratory study out of Missoula just to develop techniques. And we captured 14 lions and and no one had ever done this before, drugging them in trees and taking them out and marking them individually. Well, nine of those 14 were killed by hunters before the end of winter. So anything in Montana would have been impossible to do to retain a study population.
So we worked out a a long term contract deal with Dick Woodworth and the Idaho Fish and Game Department. And I hired Wilbur Wiles, who became more like a brother than an assistant or companion. And I gave him a tremendous amount of credit for any success we had. He knew the country. He and he suggested Big Creek was probably the best place to do it.
Lions were vermin in those days. Anybody could hunt them and did kill them any time of the year. But Big Creek was isolated. There was only you had to fly in there in winter. And not everyone could afford that. Not everyone could do the rigorous hiking in that country for a winter outing. So that was in the early years.
Our security, as the project went on and it became obvious it was going to be successful. I thought more and more of of long term wilderness research, a woods hole of wilderness research is what I, I really dreamed of and the opportunities there. This is the biggest roadless landmass in the United States, the Frank Church wilderness. It was the Idaho primitive area in those days and the Selway Bitterroot, the Wilderness to the north and the wisdom of a committee back in 1932 to set that aside as a primitive area, as watershed.
The governor appointed a committee of of a cross section business people, the ecologist, farmers, lawyers, and they decided the best use of that was probably leave it as it is for irrigation and water supplies watershed. What wisdom and because timber resources weren't economically viable, miners had combed the country from the settlement of the West and nothing big had emerged what had already been pretty much taken out.
So they said, Leave it alone, just as it is roadless. So that was a stroke of near genius in those days. Now, of course, with wilderness, it's secure, but they the idea of a of a wilderness research Leopold put it so well that wilderness has maintained itself for centuries without our help, without our manipulation. It's a great opportunity to study the how a healthy land can maintain itself, replace soil faster than it's taken away on and on, and measure that against our activities outside wilderness.
What we're doing to change landscapes and how we can prevent disaster by looking to wilderness and what it does to maintain itself over centuries. So I thought a a unique situation. Montana had what they called a wilderness research station, but it's on paper alone. And this is could be, I argued tangible evidence the purchase of this property tangible evidence of the University of Idaho's interest, of true interest in wilderness research and preservation.
That was the aim.
Jack Kredell:And did you broker that deal with the Taylors?
Maurice Hornocker:Yeah. He had sold it twice and taken earnest money, and they didn't come through with the money. It was on the market for $100,000 and I steered a couple of people I thought, who might maintain it well. And from my experience with the Craigheads people who really love the land and would take care of it, and they saw it as too costly.
And so then I this idea Jess Taylor was not a conservationist. He had battled the wilderness. He hated predators. He shot eagles and coyote and anything else he thought that threatened them. He was not a conservationist. And so I was a little apprehensive and a little reluctant to approach him with such an idea. But he wanted to sell it.
He wanted the money, and he agreed. And I have a letter, the original letter that I, I wrote him outlining the what I would view as a vision of research center there administered by the university. So he agreed to that. So I went to Moscow and Ernie Hartung was not in at the time, but I met with Ken Dick, the financial vice president.
He really liked the idea and he carried it to President Hartung. And I guess you could say the rest is history.
Jack Kredell:What was your your vision for Taylor?
Maurice Hornocker:A woods hole. Woods Hole in the West. An Oregon State marine biology lab. Santa Cruz Marine Lab. Independent, but affiliated. I helped set one up a quail research center in Texas. Rolling plains. Quail Research Foundation in West Texas and Independent Foundation, but affiliated with Texas A&M. Functioning beautifully. Tall Timbers, Quail Research Center in Alabama or Tennessee, rather same.
Same. Tremendously successful. Ducks Unlimited is a little different. It's more of a public relations group and all but does a tremendous amount of good. I could see this for wilderness and wilderness species. And again, it's not just about a given species, a mountain lion or but multiple research. The biggest watershed in the United States, single roadless watershed. Water is soon to become more precious, that is in many other parts of the world, more precious than than gold or oil.
And here we're sitting on the biggest single watershed in the United States. We should just be pounding the drums on that for water conservation because it's critical in a lot of parts of the world freshwater. And here we have all these pristine streams that could support a salmon steelhead population, the reproduction of that tremendous population, once again, if we could get them here because we have the spawning streams. Pristine -- on and on all mines, there are tons of old mining shafts and all we need to be monitoring.
Now there's a four or acid waste and and and pollution, possible pollution from those old mines. On and on the opportunities. There are endless fires. Fires are going to become more and more. I mean, we're already seeing it and here's an opportunity to after fire research and and insects. Wilbur was a great observer by all partner and when the the bark beetles came in he has an acreage there at big Creek and he observed that the the old trees died, bark beetles kill the old tree.
Young trees thrived because they no longer had the light competition. Moisture competition from the old trees. The old trees died and fell over and rotted down. Leopold's rebuilding soil faster than it's carried away the natural system. There was a big anthill at the base of a huge Doug fir by his back door and I said, You ought to get rid of those.
And no, they take care of all the aphids and the big fir and the aphids would kill it if they had an opportunity. But these ants feed on the incredible. But I could go on and on and on an opportune entity.
Jack Kredell:One thing that I find fascinating about Taylor is how the mountain lion has been central to the interests of that place before you even. Dave Lewis.
Maurice Hornocker:Yeah.
Jack Kredell:Had a frontier ethos wanted to eradicate. Yeah, big cats. But then and you had a conservationist ethos and it's fascinating that the flip you can see the shift in attitudes at Taylor in that it goes from a, a backcountry station for, for killing them to wanting to understand them. But the cat has always been central. Can you talk about just what makes it a special place in terms of mountain lions?
Maurice Hornocker:That's. I hadn't thought of in that regard. I guess it's just the total picture of a huge wilderness area. This is centrally located in that big wilderness roadless wilderness area accessible to humans only by air or 30 miles or more trail. that and I do like to think that that our work brought attention to and not only the lions, but the lions placed in that environment that they could be the spokesperson spokes animal for wilderness.
And yet they are so adaptable they can occur anywhere like bald eagles or a symbol of, of positive things in the environment. even though they're not nearly as majestic a bird as a golden eagle. But still, the point is there's like cows in India, cranes in Japan. The Siberian tiger in Siberia was, was almost wholly to the native people that they felt if ..., the tiger population, was vigorous, the forest was healthy and they lived off the forest from the plants, the the fuel, the building materials, they depended on it and they revered ...
And if they member of their culture injured a tiger, bad things would happen, killed or injured or die or bad things would happen not just to that individual, but his culture, his people. And so the cultural is much stronger than political or even economic in many cases. And that's what we've tried to do, is to reach people to how could you possibly think of killing or harming such a beautiful animal, an animal that has useful a purpose in nature?
Jack Kredell:I think often humans want to be the wolf or be the cat in terms of their their their keystone role in regulating prey. But but they often do a bad job compared to.
Maurice Hornocker:Yeah.
Jack Kredell:These yeah.
Maurice Hornocker:Every major work that I am aware of that we talk about balance of nature that's kind of a warm term but that there's truth in it. And look at the big reserves in Russia that for a couple, three centuries they've kept records their wolves and moose, the one we're working in, in Siberia. SOKOTO You lean on the coast, they've kept records there over the year.
There's a beautiful balance there. Serengeti in Africa that the prey species, the antelope, the zebra that the will to be fluctuate with weather patterns, rain mainly and but the lion population fluctuates and a leopard down here at a lower level and at a lower cadence but it remains the same. And if a predator over utilizes its prey, it suffers.
And that just doesn't happen in those those cases where we have long term records and man has an interfered. Yellowstone is a great example and that's in our book. Our cougars have killed elk since they've been there, but they're still there was our population of El wolves are really helped smooth that out and they just like we talked earlier, their population just zoom way up and feral but it's come back down.
Idaho's doing the same way and the management agencies claim, you know, that they're doing it with their killing and certainly they're having an effect, but that population will drop back down anyway. And it's amazing. Well, I won't go there.
Jack Kredell:Why not?
Maurice Hornocker:We we want to kill more wolves. Our legislature, our economy, our ranching community want to kill and them know, I must say, a big portion of the hunting community because they eat elk. And yet we're killing almost record numbers of elk every year. And it was interesting, three years ago there were two groups from Salmon, Idaho, in Boise to visit with the legislature.
One group said, We've got to do something about these wolves. They're just killing all our game animals. The other group said, We got to do something about these elk, their best and all our fences down and eaten all our haystacks! Logic. But there is and it's accepted in scientific circles that that these predator prey relationships rarely new species who have evolved together one disseminate the population of the other doesn't happen introduced species is different.
You put rats on an island with seabirds and the rats will overkill the seabirds. They didn't evolve together. They don't know how to respond to it. Elk in Yellowstone at first didn't know how to respond to wolves they were sitting ducks, but they soon learned changed their behavior. Used to be able to see several hundred cows and calves in the Tamar Valley.
This time of year, you don't do that anymore. They're smaller groups and they're in the forest. This group of permanent elk here in the Wood River Valley. Now they're all up and down the valley and a lot of people feel that they're here because of the wolves brought them down off the and they're safer here in the valley than they were up there.
I tend to agree in part with that. We've seen the same thing in Yellowstone and we have evidence for it. I mean, we're not just making observational decisions or conclusions. We have marked animals and both elk and and the cougars. So things things change. Animals adapt.
- Title:
- Maurice Hornocker Interview, Part One
- Creator:
- Jack Kredell
- Date Created:
- July 16, 2022
- Description:
- Jack Kredell interviews Maurice Hornocker, a cougar and large mammal researcher at the Taylor Wilderness Research Station. In part one, Maurice discusses why the research station was needed, how it was founded, and other topics. In part two, Maurice talks about the first time he went to the Taylor Ranch, tagging cougars, and other stories about his time at the research station.
- Subjects:
- ecology hunters cougars elk conservation research
- Location:
- Belleview, Idaho
- Latitude:
- 43.4635
- Longitude:
- -114.2606
- Source:
- Voices of Taylor - Jack Kredell Interview Project funded by the U of I Library and the College of Natural Resources
- Type:
- Image;MovingImage
- Format:
- video/mp4
- Preferred Citation:
- "Maurice Hornocker Interview, Part One", Taylor Wilderness Research Station Archive, University of Idaho Library Digital Initiatives
- Reference Link:
- https://www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/taylor-archive/items/hornocker_1.html
- Rights:
- In Copyright. Educational Use only. Educational use includes non-commercial use of text and images in materials for teaching and research purposes. Digital reproduction permissions assigned by University of Idaho Library. For more information, please contact University of Idaho Library Special Collections and Archives Department at libspec@uidaho.edu.