Gathering antlers has been a favorite pastime in the state, but the high dollars they fetch is now putting animals’ lives at risk
On a spring day in April last year, wildlife law enforcement officers in Wyoming made an alarming discovery. While patrolling national forest land in the state’s north-west, they came across an overflowing stack of 40 antlers piled among the trees and concealed with branches.
The antlers, they realised, were part of an illegal poaching cache. Collecting antlers has long been a favorite pastime in Wyoming, where the state’s bull elk spend most of the summer growing massive antlers before shedding them the following spring. There are, however, strict limits on when people are allowed to gather these antlers – which typically fetch high dollars to be used as decorations, dog chews or craft products – from public lands.
Antler gathering season on forest lands opens on 1 May every year and is closed year round on a nearby elk refuge, meaning this pile had clearly been covertly harvested and hidden.
After weeks of investigation, federal and state law enforcement officers discovered an Idaho man named Jonathan Lee Cox had illegally collected more than 1,000lbs of antlers from forest lands and the refuge worth a whopping $18,000. He pleaded guilty in March, was fined $6,000 in federal court, was banned from Wyoming public land and from hunting anywhere in the world for three years.
This comes down to a wildlife harassment issue,” said Brad Hovinga, the Wyoming game and fish department’s wildlife supervisor in the Jackson, Wyoming region. “The people who are in those closed areas and collecting antlers when they shouldn’t be, are disturbing wildlife during a time when it’s very important for them not to be disturbed.”
Faced with too much human activity, animals like elk, bighorn sheep or mule deer burn valuable calories they need to survive at the end of winter, biologists say. Too much stress and too few calories can lower birth rates and even weaken some animals to the point they die.
In some cases, people even identified individual animals with particularly valuable antlers and pushed them into trees or fences or placed tangles of rope above illegal bait hoping to snag the antlers off the creatures’ heads before they fell naturally.
Well that’s a lot more sinister and damaging to the animals than I was expecting.
As I’ve been doing posts for Superbowl over here, I’ve learned so much about how animal life is way more difficult than we assume it to be. We see these creatures for their beauty and don’t tend to focus much on their daily grind.
Owls are especially delicate for large birds, especially when it comes to getting head injuries due to their eyes being so large, and if anything happens to a male during nesting season, he’s the only one able to leave the nest to hunt, so if he can’t hunt successfully or is injured/killed, the whole “family” will starve to death. Also, the risk of bringing back a poisoned rodent can also end the lot of them as well.
Surviving in nature for many animals comes down to being able to maintain metabolism, and getting that next meal is critical. Each failed hunting attempt makes the next that much more difficult, so disturbing them can lead to their deaths. Imagine if you had to run sprints against a group of people, and each time you didn’t finish in the top 3 you wouldn’t get to eat before the next race. It wouldn’t take long for you to feel that impact. That is why these safe areas for animals are important.
Yeah, a lot of predators are running against the clock and can’t afford to lose too many times.
I’d say only the species that live off humans are less affected by resource limitations, but you’re right, I keep forgetting how hard it is for animals:
Not even just animals, really
Lol that comic really nailed it!
We definitely developed all this tech and civilization for a reason. As tough as we still have it sometimes, our caveman ancestors didn’t have it much better than the bird in that comic. People in certain parts of the world now are still going through much the same as well, sadly. We’ve still got a long way to go.
Whenever I spent too much time thinking I’d rather be one of my pets, I always said I couldn’t even handle cleaning up after going to the bathroom like they do! 😂
