A Deer Migration You Have to See to Believe
April 22, 2014---Researchers have only recently found the longest large mammal migration in the continental United States: Mule deer migrate 150 miles (241 kilometers) in western Wyoming each year. And it's no easy task for them--barriers include highways, fences, tough terrain, and bodies of water. In this video by Joe Riis, a National Geographic grantee and regular contributor, see the modern-day obstacles mule deer overcome to make the migratory trek that they likely have been making for generations.
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Mule Deer Migration
Hall Sawyer
Research Biologist
It’s 2013, and for large mammals around North America, especially the Lower 48, we typically think we know what’s going on. And here we have hundreds of animals migrating 150 miles across private and public lands, right underneath our noses, and we didn’t even know about it.
My name’s Hall Sawyer, and I’m a research biologist. I’ve been studying mule deer in western Wyoming now for more than 15 years. We recently started a mule deer study in the red desert of Wyoming. And the study was intended to just document the movement and distribution patterns of what we thought was the non-migratory, or resident herd in the desert.
But to my surprise, and everybody else’s, it turns out that most of these deer migrate some 150 miles north to the mountain ranges of northwest Wyoming.
This new GPS technology provides us a window into this mysterious process of migration that we’ve never had before.
When you look at this migration on a map, you say, “Oh wow, these deer moved 150 miles.” But it’s especially impressive when you actually look at this migration route on the ground and you see first-hand the landscape and the obstacles these animals have to move through. Three highways, over 100 fences and multiple reservoir and river crossings.
Joe Riis
Photojournalist
My job as a photojournalist working on this project is to show people what deer migration looks like. I want to show people this type of migration footage that gets people to envision what it’s like to be an animal, and what it’s like to be a migrating animal that’s moving 100 miles, 200 miles and try to help people think about these long distance movements.
A lot of the areas I focused on is that the outlets of these lakes called finger lakes. One thing that was really interesting for me is that each time I checked the camera, I’d click through the video and there’d be a lot of vocalizations.
Hall Sawyer
These migration behaviors are learned from mother to offspring from generation to generation. Deer use the same migration route year after year after year.
What we’ve learned from this is that this incredible migration can take place right under our noses in the year 2012… thousands of animals moving 150 miles… the fact that this migration can still exist in unprotected areas in this day and age is pretty amazing.
