At
southwest Montana’s Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge, the shallow waters
of Upper and Lower Red Rock Lakes and Swan Lake, along with adjacent marshlands, provide
a home for a proliferation of birds and wildlife. The preserve is nestled
between the Gravelly Range to the north and the spectacular Centennial Mountains on the south.
The
40,000-acre refuge was created primarily to provide sanctuary for the trumpeter
swan, which in the 1930s was in danger of extinction. The bird’s population had
dwindled to fewer than 100 individuals in the tri-state Montana-Idaho-Wyoming region by the
end of the Great Depression, while only a few other remnant populations
remained in Canada and Alaska. Happily, today the Greater Yellowstone
Ecosystem claims some 500 resident swans, and the influx of migratory birds
from the north brings the number to several thousand in winter.
Moose
are year-round residents of the refuge, and deer, elk, and pronghorn are common in the
snowless months. The bird life rivals that of nearly any place in the Rocky
Mountain West: No fewer than 258 species can be seen at one time of the year
or another, including bald eagles, avocets, long-billed curlews, great blue
herons, sandhill cranes, white pelicans, tundra swans, and twenty-three species
of ducks and geese. Migratory birds by the thousands appear during the spring
and fall.
The
impressive, snow-white trumpeters (watch this to see and hear why they're called that) are immense birds, measuring up to four feet from beak to
toe and eight feet from wing tip to wing tip, and weighing as much as thirty
pounds. And they’re hungry big birds with phenomenal metabolisms: It’s common
for an adult to eat up to twenty pounds of wet herbage in a day’s time.
To
experience this isolated piece of country is well worth the trouble of getting
there. The outpost of Lakeview—population ten—stands sentinel over the
wetlands, and the refuge headquarters is found there. Lakeview is midway along
the 60-mile gravel road connecting I–15 at Monida and Highway 87 west of West
Yellowstone. The road is generally not passable by automobile until mid-May and
is usually snowed in again by early November.
The mountain bike is a good way to get there; in fact, the Great Divide Mountain Bike Route runs right through Red Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge.
From
my journal, June 2002
Awakening at Upper Lake Campground in Red
Rock Lakes National Wildlife Refuge in mid-June is a bit like greeting the day
on Montana’s version of a Tarzan movie set, considering all the noise the local
critters make.
It started when it was still dark and starry
with the resonant hoot of a great gray owl and two choruses of coyotes yipping,
yammering, and squealing back and forth. From my tent it sounded like a
demonstration of stereo speakers: One bunch of coyotes over there to the west;
the other clearly off in another direction, somewhere to the southeast in the
foothills of the Centennial Range.
With the first hint of light in the eastern
sky, the Canada geese began honking, followed by the deeper and louder honking
of trumpeter swans. Then ducks—hundreds of them, maybe thousands—began chiming
in with their variously timbred quacking. Finally, dozens of songbirds added
their melodic two cents’ worth to the mix. It all coalesced into a cacophony that
was terribly dissonant if I tried to separate the sounds but marvelously
musical if I just took it in as a whole. I’ve never heard anything quite like
it anywhere else.
Adapted from Montana: Off the Beaten Path, 8th edition