Oral History Program Lloyd Gunther Interviewed by Carmen Anderson 6 July 1972 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Lloyd Gunther Interviewed by Carmen Anderson 6 July 1972 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Lloyd Gunther, an oral history by Carmen Anderson, 6 July 2012, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Lloyd Gunther Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Lloyd Gunther conducted by Carmen Anderson, on July 6, 1972, at his home in Brigham City, Utah. Mr. Gunther has over thirty years of experience working at the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge. In this interview, he discusses the history of the refuge, as well as the history of the Malad and Bear Rivers. Mr. Gunther also discusses the restoration of fresh water marshes, plant life around the refuge, the variety of bird species at the refuge, and bird migration patterns. CA: Mr. Gunther, would you tell us how you became interested in your present work? LG: Thank you, I'd be happy to. I suppose it dates back to my boyhood days when I grew up on a little irrigated farm down in Utah County. From my boyhood on, I was always interested in birds and I often dropped a hoe or cultivator and went to the orchard to look for birds and nests and this whet my appetite to study wildlife. When I graduated from high school, I looked at a college catalog from Utah State Agricultural College. I noticed they offered a degree in wildlife management. Upon looking over the subject courses, I decided that was for me. I pursued that and I've never regretted it. I've always enjoyed my work from that time on. Now to tell you just a little about the Bear River Refuge. This was my first experience with the Fish and Wildlife Service, which, when I first joined the organization, was known as the United States Biological Survey. I started out at the Bear River Refuge about thirty years ago and I have transferred to various 1 other wildlife refuges in the interim period. I returned here about seven years ago. To give you a little history of the refuge, it's quite a large area. It covers about a hundred square miles. It spans the lower Bear River Valley from the Wasatch Mountains on the east, to near the Promontory Mountains on the west. Before the refuge was established, it was known as the Bear River Delta. Of course, the word delta implies that there have been sediment deposits from the Bear River. This stems back very anciently, even pre-dating Lake Bonneville. Lake Bonneville covered much of Utah, part of southern Idaho, and a little of eastern Nevada. It was a great body of water and it existed for many thousands of years. Some geologists even say the lake has dried up, I think, no less than three times in its geological past. It has had its fluctuation up and down over the ancient past. But anyway, the lake having been there for a comparatively long period of time has left tremendous amounts of sediment. Some of the geologists that have studied the valley in the last year or so have placed instruments out there to measure the depth of the lake sediments. They have done this by what they call a gravity meter, which measures the density of the materials, the sediments and, of course, the solid rock beneath. Interestingly, there is a mountain range that extends just under our refuge headquarters area. It goes from Little Mountain to the north clear on down to Little Mountain just west of Ogden. This entire mountain range is completely covered with the lake sediments. The sediments in the center part of the refuge are comparatively shallow—only a few thousand feet deep. Between Brigham 2 City and the refuge headquarters, they go up to eight thousand feet deep. From refuge headquarters to Promontory, the sediments measure up to ten thousand feet in depth. We know the lake has been there for a long period of time. Also, when the lake was at its height, the area now occupied by the refuge would have been under about one thousand feet of water at its present surface elevation. The water that created much of the sediments, of course, came from the Bear River. The Bear River is a very interesting stream. It has its origin in the north slope of the Uinta Mountains. By the way the crow flies, the distance from its mouth to its source is only about sixty miles. But with its meandering course, it takes over five hundred miles to travel that distance. Of course, it travels from Utah into Wyoming and back into Utah and into Idaho and back into Utah again. It's one of the most thoroughly utilized streams in the world. It has five power plants on it where they generate electricity. The water is used over and over and over again. The waters are also utilized for irrigation. The fact that the water has been taken out for irrigation and industrial and other purposes has diminished the flow of the water at the critical summer time, so that the refuge today has periods of feast and famine, so to speak. It's either too much water at the wrong time of the year or too little water during the late summer months. This is one of our most serious problems. There is also a great degree of pollution, both natural and human pollution, which has taken place in recent years. In the summer, the flow is often less than a hundred cubic feet per second. When the flow is at this small amount, then the water temperatures are increased, the salinity of the water becomes high and this not only adversely affects the animal life living in the 3 water but also the plant life living along borders of the stream. Historically, the river was bordered by cottonwood trees, willows, and things like this on the lower stretches of the river that are now absent because of the changes in the chemistry of the water. The fish life, where it formerly was dominated by suckers, today has been replaced by the introduced carp. They have taken over and seem to thrive in waters normally considered of substandard quality. The water has undergone a form of degradation and a change in kinds of fish that are adaptable to this changed condition. To explain a little bit about the natural pollution, there are a number of thermal, mineralized springs along the course of the river. One north of Brigham City, Hot Springs is an example. This contributes some form of thermal and mineralized pollution to the river, especially when there isn't fresh water coming down to dilute it. In the late summer the pollution is more apparent. Also, the Malad River enters the Bear River just above the town of Corinne. It also carries a high amount of salts. It's interesting even to think about the name of the Malad River. It got its name originally from a group of early settlers who camped along the banks of the Malad River. That was before it was given such a name. They drank the water and became ill and because the water made them sick, they called it Malady River. The Malad, today, is just a corruption of the word Malady. Here again, we see some of the relationships between the mineralized salt in the water that creates a natural form of pollution. Also, of course, as the valley became settled and communities sprang up, many of them dumped their raw 4 sewage directly into the river. It's only in the last two or three years that we have been able to see some degree of cleaning up this situation, but it's far from being considered a clean stream. In fact, it's a very polluted body of water. We find at refuge headquarters, where we're at the end of the ditch, so to speak, with our control gates, we see everything come down the river that you might find in the city garbage dump. Dead cows and chickens and all kinds of livestock come floating down the river. Sometimes these animals might fall in accidentally, but more often we think that they are dumped in deliberately because it's a convenient way of disposal for people who happen to live along the river. We're constantly pulling dead animals out of the river and trying to dispose of them. In the late summer we see great amounts of algae growth in the water which is characteristic of a high organic content in the water. Fortunately, the state has served notice on some of the people, communities, and industries that are dumping sewage into the river. I imagine it is just a matter of time until we'll see a marked improvement in the quality of the Bear River water. This is the water that reaches the refuge and, of course, the plants that grow on the refuge are quite well suited to a quality of water that agriculture would not be able to survive under. The plants are very salt tolerant. We have some of the highest salt tolerant plants in existence in the world. One of our pioneer plants might be of interest to mention. It is known commonly as salt wart. The botanists call it Salicornia. Some of the people call it pickle weed because it's a little succulent plant. It has little joints and looks a little bit like pickles. It is the first plant to invade the salt flats 5 whenever moisture conditions are favorable. Because these plants are so salt tolerant they have been able to survive. These are some of the types of plants that the birds and animals out there live on. To mention a little bit about the wildlife that inhabit the Bear River Refuge today, perhaps I'd better go back first and describe a little about what lead up to the establishment of the refuge. Of course, as the water supply in the river began to diminish many of the marshes along the delta began to dry up in the summer time. So with the loss of marshes and the accompanying loss of birds it caused the public to be quite alarmed over this situation. At about the turn of the century, the ducks were noticed to die of a malady which is now referred to as botulism, a form of food poisoning that killed the birds not by the thousands but by the hundreds of thousands. This exacted a great toll of our water fowl. This was one of the situations that aroused the public to petition congress to do something about it. So with the aid of the state Fish and Game Department, conservation groups, sportsman organizations and the public in general, a bill was introduced into congress and out of this came the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge, which was established by a special act of congress in 1928. Following the establishment of the refuge, they began constructing about thirty-five miles of main dikes to hold the water of the Bear River from going directly into the Great Salt Lake. This has made possible the restoration of the fresh water marshes and brought about bird populations that, at times, come 6 close to approximating what the early settlers must have seen when they first came down the Bear River. Another little historical incident that might be of interest is that Jim Bridger was the first reported white man to come down the river in his buffalo-hide boat. The place that is now occupied by the refuge is where the salt water and the fresh water met. The Great Salt Lake, at that time, was higher than it is today. This is where the fresh and salt water joined. When Jim Bridger reached the edge of what is called the Great Salt Lake, he thought he had reached an arm of the Pacific Ocean. This is what he reported he had found. This is an interesting sideline. A little more history of the area before the marshes dried up and the refuge was there: it was one of the prime hunting areas for which we refer to as the market hunters. Just around the turn of the century, or a little before—in the late 1800s—hunters used to gather there to shoot ducks for the markets and ship them back east packed in ice and barrels. They went to Philadelphia, Chicago, and some of the other mid-western and eastern markets. So it was a famous place for hunting as a commercial enterprise. It's not unusual to expect that once these marshes were restored that the birds and animals would respond to the improved habitat conditions—this is virtually what has happened. Today, we can see over two hundred different species of birds in the course of the year. There are about sixty different kinds that nest there and raise their families. 7 The refuge is interesting not just at one season of the year but over all four seasons of the year. The bird population changes with the seasons. While in the spring and summer months we have our nesting population, our total bird numbers are comparatively low. Over the four seasons we get a great variety of birds, as was mentioned, over two hundred kinds. At certain seasons of the year, one kind is more spectacular than another, so there is no one best time for a person to see the refuge. It may be the best time to see one thing but not the best time for another. As an example, say a person wanted to see Whistling Swans. If they were to come in the summer time they would be very disappointed because all the Whistling Swan nests on the north coast of Alaska along the Bering Straits. They like the cold country, so they don't show up at Bear River until about mid-October. They reach their peak in about mid-November. If a person wanted to see the swans in the greatest numbers, mid-November would be the ideal time. In mid-November, one could expect to see from twenty to thirty or even possibly forty thousand Whistling Swan concentrated there, which is probably as great a concentration as you'll see anywhere in the world. This is just one example. Now, if you came in mid-November, you wouldn't see such birds as pelicans. They have long gone by then. They like the warmer climates. The Blue Wing and Cinnamon Teal would have passed on by then. The avocets and stilts, the ibis and many of the other birds would have gone to warmer climates. Birds are a lot like people, some like it warm and some like it cold. We have all kinds. Because we have birds with different preferences for climate makes it interesting over all months of the year. Probably the month of greatest concentration would 8 be the month of September when the local production of birds has come off and before they leave and the northern migrants begin to move in. So in September we often have as many as three-quarters to a million ducks there at one time and, of course, thousands and thousands of other kinds of birds. If one wants to see a mass number of birds, then perhaps September would be a good time to come. Surprisingly, most people like to come when we have a fewer number of birds. That's in the spring of the year, May and June, when the little birds are on their nest and beginning to hatch. There is something about little birds that attract people. Our greatest visitation is during the month of May. It is also the time the birds are most colorful, being in their breeding plumage. Part of this is due to school children. Before they let out of school, they make their trips and we allow them to take the buses on a self-guided or a guided tour around one of the major impoundments. There they can see representative birds of the refuge. CA: Is Pelican Island in the refuge? LG: No, Pelican Island, which is more properly known as Gunnison Island, is one of the islands in Great Salt Lake. It's perhaps the remotest island in the north arm of the lake and hardest to get to. This is where the pelicans nest and raise their families. All the pelicans in Utah nest on this island. It's the only place at the present time that they do nest, to my knowledge. It's about thirty or forty miles from the refuge. The pelicans that nest on the island have to come to fresh water to get their food. There are no fish in Great Salt Lake. Pelicans live on fish. So the Bear River Refuge, being the closest source of food, is where most of them come. During the spring and early summer months we see them coming and 9 going constantly between the refuge and Gunnison Island where they nest. When the young are able to fly,they abandon Gunnison Island. That is the only time of the year they use Gunnison Island—during the breeding and nesting season. They come in to the refuge to get a closer food source. There they gorge themselves on fish, primarily carp. We have great numbers of them and the waters are very shallow, so it's very attractive to them. We can watch and see their very interesting feeding habits. Pelicans are especially cooperative birds. They work together, they nest together in colonies, and they fish together. They often form a big circle and then tend to close the circle as they stir up the fish with their feet and their bills and herd them into a small circle. Then, when the fish are concentrated, they work in unison to catch the fish. It is very efficient. Sometimes they will form an arc, herd the fish into shallow waters near the shores, and then they will do the same thing. They're very interesting birds to watch and, as I said, they are one of the most cooperative birds because they all work together for a common good. This is not true of many of the other birds. We could, just for a moment, describe some of the habits of some of the birds because birds are much like people. We've got all kinds. We have different temperaments and different life styles for them. For instance, take the Canada Geese. They mate and stay mated as long as they are both alive. Both parents, when they have young, take care of them. They both share in the raising of the family. The family ties are very strong. When you go out in the spring of the year and see the little goslings, usually daddy and mama are on either side of the brood. They watch over them and guard them. Even 10 when the young are the size of their parents, they still remain as a family unit. When they migrate, they stay as a family group until probably the time they reach breeding age themselves. Then they go and feed for themselves and start the cycle all over again. Another one of our ducks has similar habits—the little Ruddy Duck. It is the only duck where daddy and mama both take care of the family. With the other ducks, it's just that mama that has the responsibility of raising the family. After the ducks hatch their eggs, daddy's nowhere to be seen. He doesn't have that responsibility. This is not true of all the birds. We have one that reverses this process—a little bird out there known as the Wilson's Phalarope. The mother lays the eggs, then she feels her duty is done. Daddy has to incubate them and raise the family and she goes off with the girls and has nothing more to do with raising the family. This is another one that is quite interesting. Another one of a little human interest is a little marsh wren, one of the smallest birds that inhabits the marshland. It's very similar to a house wren but it inhabits the marshes and is known as the Long Billed Marsh Wren. They build a little basket nest with a tiny hole in it. The males arrive on the nesting grounds before the females do and they set up a territory and defend it against others of the same species. About the time the female arrives or just before, the male begins to build not just one nest but several nests—maybe six or eight in one little colony. When she arrives on the scene they mate and she looks all the nests over and she doesn't use any of them. She goes ahead and builds her own, which is identical to the ones he has built. The only difference is hers is 11 feather lined and hers has eggs in, whereas all of his nests we call dummy nest because they contain no eggs and won't contain any. People have speculated just why the marsh wren does this. Some say the male marsh wren does this just to use up his nervous energy, others say he builds these dummy nests to camouflage the real one from any would be predators, to buffer it against losses from predation. It has also been jestingly suggested that some women are just hard to please. Anyways, the birds you can find them in all types of life styles. We've got the little Cow Bird that deposits its eggs in other birds’ nests. They don't even build one of their own. Somebody else has to raise their family for them. There again, we've got birds that are polygamists, some are monogamists, some are promiscuous. We've all kinds in the bird family. This makes it very interesting to study them and to watch them and to learn more about them. It gives a lot of color to the visitors who come there. One of the other uses of the refuge is for people who come just to take pictures of birds. It's a very fine area and an attractive one because it's an area where people can see birds not only in large numbers but they are concentrated where they can get to them with their cameras, set up their blind, and take pictures to their hearts content. Many people travel from all over the United States and I might even say from some foreign countries come here because they figure it's one of the best places in the world to get pictures of nesting birds. Every spring of the year we have large numbers of photographers that come for that very purpose. 12 The bird migration we talked about a little bit. We have two periods of the year when the numbers are up. In the early spring, when the birds are down on the wintering grounds they go to Central and South America and along the Pacific Coast. They then begin their northern migration. They reach the peak here in about mid-March and then it drops off to just our summer resident population. In the early fall or late summer months we begin the fall migration. Then birds nesting farther north, up in Canada, Alaska, and so forth begin their southward migration. Then, of course, they reach their peak in September and early October. Then they gradually diminish. As some of the birds leave, others take their places. But just from general speaking, they tend to diminish in numbers from about October on. Total numbers are fewer until about the end of the year when we reach our lowest ebb. As the waters freeze over, the birds are forced to leave us. So during the months of January and February is our most bleak period. It isn't that we don't have any birds, but we have the fewest number of birds because there are only a few little open pockets of water as a general rule. This lack of food, of course, forces the birds to leave us. The waters of the refuge are very shallow. They only average maybe a foot or eighteen inches deep in the major impoundment. When the waters are shallow they are very productive. The sunlight can penetrate the water and the bottom is quite fertile. It produces a great amount of animal life in the way of crustaceans and insect larva and things like this—food that many of the birds depend on, particularly when they are young. Young birds like a high protein diet, so they eat a lot of bugs. The water produces great quantities of Sago Pond 13 Weed. This is a plant that grows submerged in the water. It produces seeds, but the seed isn't the most important food item. It's the little tuber—the little bulb that is in the mud that is the main food source for the birds in the fall and winter months. In fact, the Whistling Swan, when they come in in great numbers this is the main attraction. The swan feed solely on this one plant. They like to eat the Sago Pond Weed and they don't need anything but that. To feed twenty or thirty thousand swan for any length of time takes great quantities of food and, of course, this is what the refuge is producing in the summer time, food for the birds in the fall months. There are other foods out there but this is one of the primary ones. In the spring of the year, May or June, people coming out there often see great swarms of insects that they often think are mosquitoes. They look like little smoke clouds or little dust devils from a distance. Some people even ask what is burning when they see great masses of them. These are the mating swarms of the Midge Flies. The males do this ceremonial type of swarming to attract the female. When she enters the swarm mating takes place. She lays her eggs out on the water. When the eggs hatch then the larval stage of the Midge Fly is known as Blood Worms, because they are red in color and live in the mud. As you go out and see the avocets, stilts and other shore birds probing in the mud this is largely what they are feeding on, the larval stage of the Midge Fly. This is just an example of the importance of insect life to the bird life. Of course, we have great amounts of birds that depend upon insects for their sustenance. 14 We, of course, have many birds that depend on the fish life like the pelicans do. The grebes, terns, gulls, herons, and the egrets, these are all fish eating birds. We have many kinds of these, because there are a lot of fish in the shallow waters that make them very attractive to them. Because we have vegetation we also have vegetarian birds. The diets change with the seasons. The young birds require more animal matter and as they get older they become more vegetarian. I think it's a little bit like human diets, babies like more milk when they're young and more vegetables as they get older. CA: Is it necessary to provide winter birds with feeding stations? LG: No, we prefer not to do this. Not that we don't want to provide food for the birds but if we provide food in the winter then we short stop them along their migratory route. Their natural inclination is to migrate with the season where food is available. We purposely do not feed, except in rare instances, in the winter time. Only in an emergency situation like the pheasants which are not migratory. We would rather the birds move on where other people can also share in the enjoyment of them, hunting and so on. We let the season regulate the density of our bird population by the food availability. To answer your question, we generally do not provide any supplementary food other than what grows there naturally in the course of management of the water. CA: Does the refuge offer any services to the community that is not harmful to the birds—such as trapping? 15 LG: Yes, we have a trapping program for muskrats primarily—usually beginning about February. As soon as the ice begins to break up we issue permits to local trappers to come in and trap muskrats for a small fee. They, of course, keep the muskrat population in check. Now not only is this sport for the trapper but it also provides him a little monetary income. Most of them do it as a part-time venture although there are a few people who work at it full time during that particular season. It is important that we regulate the population of muskrats, otherwise they would, to use an old expression, "Eat us out of house and home." If muskrats become too numerous, they will denude the area of vegetation and work adversely to the interest of the birds. If they were too numerous, they would burrow through our dikes and cause us a lot of damage this way to our structures. We have to keep the muskrat population in check. A few muskrats are very helpful because they prevent dense mats of vegetation where they would exclude animal and bird use of the area. They open up dense patches of the vegetation by the creating of little muskrat houses and pot-hole effects around them. The muskrat houses provide structures on which the Canada Geese will nest, so they serve an additional useful purpose. As long as we keep them in proper balance, we can allow trapping. We still like muskrats but in modest numbers, not where they would cause us damage. CA: Is there any other means that you need to use to control the vegetation? LG: Well there are a couple of plants which we do control out there. One is the Canada Thistle, which is a noxious plant in the state of Utah. It's a state law that 16 all landowners control this on their property. We do control it by the use of herbicides. One other plant, known as Salt Cedar or Tamarisk, is a wasteful user of water. It has little or no wildlife value at all. We try to eradicate it where it shows itself, particularly in the upper parts of the marsh in order to prevent it from seeding and spreading. These are the two types of plants we control. We control them by the use of herbicides and selected treatments of only the target plants, as we would call it. CA: Are there any fire dangers out in the refuge? LG: Generally not. Not in the refuge itself, because there are so many channels and ponds and streams that there is no great expanses of area which would be threatened by fires. We occasionally do a little control burning during the winter months to open up dense patches of vegetation to create a more desirable habitat by burning a very limited amount. Fires are not a problem on the marshes, though. CA: Are there any animals besides the muskrat that you need to control in this area? LG: We do a limited amount of predator control work. Skunks, for instance, because of the nature of the area. The skunks den in our dikes and channel banks. These are also the prime nesting areas for the ducks and other birds. Because of the proximity of the two it's necessary that we control skunks. We also control what we call house cats or feral cats, domestic cats that have gone wild. They feed on the birds. We do control those and kill them wherever we see them or trap them. Sometimes people are well intentioned. I recall in the days when I was a boy, we 17 had cats on the farm and cats would always produce more than we could take care of. When we got too many cats my mother would say, "Let's go out in the country and I'm sure we can find a good home for them." When she saw a good farmhouse that looked like they had plenty of milk, she would turn a cat loose rather than have the heart to kill it. There are many similarly intentioned people today that I'm sure bring their cats out to the refuge thinking this is a good place where they can find a home. But it's one of the worst things they could do because the cats become wild and they live on the birds that are there. It is necessary for us to continually control house cats. A few magpies are here and we try and discourage them from using the refuge because they are egg eaters. The California Gulls are also an egg-eater and they have also increased over the years so we have had to discourage their use of the refuge itself. Not that we are interested in exterminating them, but just to keep their numbers within tolerable limits in a prime water fowl nesting area. CA: Do you band birds? LG: Banding has been done, I guess, ever since the refuge has been established. We don't do as much of it today as we once did because it would become too repetitious. Much of the information we learned in the early years is already available so we don't need a duplicate. At the present time, we band mostly young Canada Geese, which is about three hundred or more each year. We do this by the use of air boats. We go out in the shallow waters and do it before the young geese are able to fly and during the time when the parent geese are in the 18 molting stage, so they are easy to catch. We just go out and jump out of the boat and catch them. We put a band on their leg, record the age and sex, and release them. It's a very simple operation and done very efficiently with the air boats. In times past, we have also banded birds that were picked up sick with botulism. We gathered them to bring them in to the hospital, treated them, restored them to health, banded and released them. This is what has been done in the past. Unless there is a specific study program to learn about a specific bird, we don't do just promiscuous banding any more. We have to have an objective in mind for doing it because it becomes very time consuming for people to analyze all the data. Unless it's going to serve a specific study project we don't do just promiscuous banding. We have a definite object in mind. At the present time, we're banding only two birds, two types of birds. Next year it might be something different. There has to be a particular study, as for instance a couple of years ago they were interested in finding out, for instance, where black birds originated from that were causing damage to feed lots in the Arizona and California areas. By banding nestling black birds they can find out which ones or where they originate that are causing damage. So if a control program were necessary they would know where to effectively concentrate their efforts. This is just an example. Generally, banding was done to trace the migratory routes of birds. That has been pretty well found and determined, so we don't have to repeat it over and over again. We know where birds nest, we know the route they travel, we know where they winter, and we know the route they take coming back. Sometimes they band to find out how much mortality there has been by the hunters and 19 things like that. There are various purposes for banding. There are also other types of marking a bird like neck collars, big colored plastic collars. You don't have to kill the bird to identify it. They even write big numbers on some of them now. With a pair of binoculars or a telescope you can read the numbers in the field. You know by reporting where the bird was tagged and for what purpose. So we get a lot of meaningful information from this. CA: Due to the use of insecticides in the area of Brigham City and out on the farms, does it create a problem among the birds? LG: Depending on what kind of insecticide it is. Some of the studies relating to egg shell thinning, we have found with the White Faced Ibis^ which is one of our somewhat threatened species of bird. Their numbers have been diminishing over the years. It has been pretty well determined that one of the causes of their decline is from insecticides such as DDT in making the birds unable to assimilate the calcium in their body and they, therefore, lay thin shelled eggs. The eggs are often crusted in the nest or fail to hatch because they are somewhat leathery and the little chick isn't able to peck out. There is a high nesting mortality among the birds that pick up insecticides. Because they are migratory birds they may pick it up clear down in Mexico. It isn't necessarily related to Box Elder County although, when it's used and the birds frequent that area, it just compounds the problem. If we were using it in this county and the birds were feeding here on insects that were killed by it, naturally it's going to have its effect on the metabolism of the birds. Insecticides do play an important part in the mortality of some birds. 20 We are not using any insecticides at the present time on the refuge. We have not done so. We do a limited amount of mosquito control just on the peripheral areas where water is concentrated in salt grass areas by ditching and draining into the big ponds. When we get into the big ponds we don't find mosquito larva there. That's not suitable habitat for them. It's only usually during the rainy seasons that we have a real mosquito problem. Where the water is not able to drain off, mosquitoes will erupt in a hurry in that place. There is a study underway to find out what affect and relationship the mosquito problem on the refuge has to the local communities. Some have said the mosquitoes migrate into the communities and cause the trouble, others have disputed this. We have a specific study to answer this particular question, "Do we contribute to the mosquito problem in the local communities or not?" “Is it a myth or a fact that the wind blows them into the town?” And so on. This will be one of the studies that we will be conducting next year. CA: How long do you think the study will take? LG: I'm not sure, depending upon how successful they are the first year. We did have a little study going on last year to sample some of the area to document the fact that mosquitoes aren't breeding in the big open bodies of water and to pin point the areas where they are breeding. We've already done something about those areas that have been so identified. Don't misunderstand me to say we don't have any mosquitoes. We still have mosquitoes but at least from the area and parts of the refuge nearest to the 21 communities we have tried to eliminate as much of the prime mosquito habitat as possible. CA: Have there been any attempts to exploit the Bear River Refuge area for other uses? LG: Not especially. The area isn't attractive for gas and oil explorations or hasn't been up until now. We haven't had too much problem maybe we will in the future but at the present time there hasn't been any threat made on the refuge. The salt extraction, the extraction of salt on the Great Salt Lake is some distance from us, about six miles south of our south boundaries. So this doesn't adversely affect the refuge at all. At the present time we don't have any encroachment on the refuge. Our real problem is a water problem, too much water in the spring when high water during the nesting season can drown out nests. Because the country is so flat we can't bypass the water. Too much water in the spring is bad and too little water in the summer time when we need it to produce the food plants that the birds eat in the fall is also adverse. If we could stabilize the water in the Bear River it would be to our advantage. Of course, there are plans, long range plans, to do this. We have designs to secure water from the Willard Reservoir where there is an access of water that is not fully subscribed to and it's being dumped in the Great Salt Lake. If we could circulate that water through our impoundments we could distribute it where it would do much more good that what is being used now. We could put that water to beneficial use in the late summer months when we are in short supply. 22 Some of the proposed dams up stream on the Bear River itself would absorb some of the early spring flow and prevent flooding. This would be a plus factor to us if we could have less water in the spring and more water in the summer. CA: You mentioned there was no best time to come and visit the Bear River Bird Refuge, now what percentage do you feel is there of people visiting the refuge to enjoy it compared to hunters? LG: I would say the hunters would maybe make up twenty percent of the total use of the refuge. About four-fifths of it is by people who just come to see birds or photograph them or just to enjoy them. Now to mention hunting. Hunting, of course, is one of the activities that are carried on there. It's not all the refuge that is open to hunting. One of the conditions in establishing the refuge by an act of Congress was that no less than sixty percent of the area would remain in an inviolate sanctuary, which means that we could open up forty percent of the area to hunting. This has been further interrupted to open up forty percent of the developed area. In other words, a lot of the mud flats and grease wood knolls and things like that aren't waterfowl habitat. We have only considered the developed portions of the refuge for forty percent of it for hunting. It is still a large sanctuary and yet it serves the hunting interest by holding the birds in the area rather than burning them out or forcing them to leave. There is good hunting over the entire hunting season whereas if more area were open it might force them out and have a shorter successful season. The hunting takes place generally from early October through about the 23 end of the year. That's the way it has been each year. Of course, the regulations are set by a department based on what they find is the supply and so on. That's generally when it occurs. It's primarily for ducks and geese and swan, Utah has a swan season by drawing lots to see who gets the permit to shoot swan. The refuge is open for swan hunting for those holding the swan permits. Anyway, that is about the distribution of the users of the refuge. Twenty percent are hunters and the balance is people who come with their families, or schools or groups who come on guided tours or for various purposes. We have a twelve mile loop that the public are free to come and take anytime the refuge is open. It's open during most of the months, seven days a week except during the off peak season in January, February, and March when we are not open on weekends. The people come and register, sign their names, and are given literature and told where to go to take either the self-guided tour or if they advise us in advance and come by bus in a large group we will give them a guide. They can have either the guided tour or the self-guided tour. There is a little visitor’s center there with a few little displays. There are a number of towers and turnouts along the visitor tour route they can stop and enjoy. There is a little fishing in the river by headquarters area. Where the marsh begins we don't allow fishing because of the conflict with the use of the area by the birds. Not that we don't want them to catch the fish, we wish they would take more fish but it's just the conflict of interests there. In the winter time, of course, it is frozen over. Many people think it would be a wonderful ice skating area, but usually the ice is quite rough and it isn't usually a very good area for ice skating. 24 We don't allow boating in the interior of the marsh, only in the river itself. People often come down the river in their canoes and their row boats. Where our control gates begin is usually where we cut off the boat use of the area—again, to avoid the conflict of interests. CA: Does the public feel that the hunting area of forty per cent is sufficient? LG: At the present time, I would say yes. Right now, geography is our friend. We are a little farther removed from population centers such as Salt Lake and Ogden where they have marshes closer to them than the Bear River Refuge. Therefore, we are not yet at a saturated condition. Only on opening day would we say that we have more hunters than we would like. Other times of the year we could accommodate far more hunters than we now have. It is not a congested area at the present time as are some of our other marshes. It's also one of the better hunting areas success-wise. The hunter success is greater at Bear River than most other hunting areas. The quality is very good. CA: How serious is the crippling of birds during the hunting season? LG: We always have people who shoot the birds beyond the killing range and, of course, they cripple birds. Also the fact that lead shot gets in the soil and the birds pick it up for grit. We get losses from the lead poisoning also which is quite serious. Nationwide, we assume several million birds a year succumb from lead poisoning by eating the lead shot. A new proposal from the government is getting the ammunition manufacturers to substitute iron shot for lead shot. It's going to be tried this year for the first time in a number of selected areas. We don't know where, it hasn't been announced. This is the long range plan to substitute a non- 25 lethal agent for the lead. Lead poisons the ducks, so if they can get the hunters to use iron shot instead, this will save thousands, perhaps millions of birds. 26