Utah's wild side

Utah really does have a wild side.

Places exist where the button-down state throws off its muzzle. There's unbridled carousing. Hooting and howling. It's OK to bay at the moon. And all within minutes of nearly every city along the Wasatch Front.

The mountains are where the wild things are.

Critters of all kinds — there are some 300 animal species in the Wasatch Mountains — make their homes on the range that anchors the populated valleys from Logan to Provo. Some people just like to look at them. Others like to shoot them.

Animal watching and hunting are among the state's most popular pastimes.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates that there are 432,700 residents and nonresidents who watch wildlife in Utah each year, including 286,400 who watch birds. There are nearly twice as many bird-watchers as big-game hunters, whose numbers have diminished the past few years.

Spotted on recent drives were two coyotes tussling over a garter snake near Mountain Dell Reservoir, a cow moose and her calf munching oak brush along Guardsman Pass, and a plump marmot toddling over rocks in Albion Basin.

"How many metropolitan areas can you go to and be this close to a mountain goat?" said Richard Williams, a U.S. Forest Service wildlife biologist scanning the Little Cottonwood Canyon cliffs for the shaggy, white beasts. "It's amazing what you can see right from the road."

Or from the back yard.

And there comes the rub.

Wildlife managers say the high country where animals spend their summers is in good shape. It's not pristine like it was 150 years ago. But ecosystems are working. Areas that were heavily logged or grazed have made a comeback. Forage and prey are plentiful. Most species are at least making it, if not thriving, though some like the grizzly bear are gone. (There are no endangered species in the Wasatch Mountains. The bald eagle and the Canada lynx are considered threatened.)

But areas below 7,000 feet elevation aren't faring well.

The concrete jungle's continued spread into the forest is paving over traditional animal habitat, particularly in the foothills. Houses, condos, driveways and roads now stand where deer and elk once found sustenance. Though often at odds, wildlife managers, environmentalists and hunters agree, urbanization is the greatest threat to Wasatch wildlife.

"In most instances, people are going to win out over wildlife," lamented Mike Welch, a DWR wildlife manager in Springville. "I don't see it changing."

Winter ranges along the east benches in Salt Lake and Utah counties "are pretty much shot," said Bill Christensen, regional director for the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, a sportsmen's group that promotes habitat conservation and restoration as well as hunting.