Researchers study Cooke City streams
Scott Ladd knelt on a bare patch of ground in Yellowstone National Park, picked up a handful of rust-colored dust, and let it fall through his fingers. Ladd, a graduate student at Montana State University, said the powder is a reminder of past gold-mining activity in Cooke City. This waste, called mine tailings, contains the heavy metals copper, arsenic and lead and was systematically dumped near Soda Butte Creek upstream from Cooke City.
The tailings are still slowly washing downstream into the park. Ladd speculated that this particular batch of mining waste was deposited in the meadow during a flood in the early 1950s.
Ladd is an expedition leader with Yellowstone Ecosystem studies. The Bozeman-based group aims to conduct long-term studies in and around Yellowstone National Park, many of them out of Cooke City.
Ladd's group, supervised by MSU earth sciences professor Andrew Marcus, was visiting the area in mid-August to study heavy metal distribution in Soda Butte Creek, with the ultimate goal of discovering whether these metals affect plant and animal life in and around the waterway.
Staffers stress that YES is a non-advocacy group, publishing research results in popular and scientific journals.
"The results of this study will be of significant interest to one side or the other in the mine debate," Marcus said, referring to the gold mine Noranda Minerals Inc. wants to develop near Cooke City. He added that no one knows which side will be supported by the research.
YES director and founder Bob Crabtree agreed. "We have no political agenda," he said. "We just let the facts speak for themselves."
Crabtree said he sees YES' various studies filling a vacant niche, since most government and university research projects are of shorter duration and more limited scope.
He said all project studies attempt to answer the questions "What's there? Where is it? And what condition is it in?"
Crabtree said he won't consider a study that lasts less than five to ten years. "We're repeatedly reminded of the misleading nature of short-tern studies," he said. "Grizzlies live to be 30 years old. And what's a two- or three-year study going to show us when climatic cycles run at ten to 1,000 years a pop?"
YES' long-tern, far-reaching research is unique, and so are the people who conduct that research. "Citizen scientists," or lay people, donate their time and a fee to YES in exchange for training and a spot on research expeditions.
"We depend on the intense concern and enthusiasm of the lay public to do ecosystem studies," Crabtree said.
Some participants are college students or recent graduates, wanting practical field research experience. Others are middle-aged, looking for a change. Still others are retirees who want to do something meaningful with their time and money. Most live outside Montana.
"These are people who want to spend their vacation here, but who also want to do something interesting and worthwhile," said YES staffer Nathan Varley.
"We're not Club Med, touching whales and all that," Crabtree said. "We put them to work."
Participants this summer have helped track grizzly bears, coyotes, and songbirds, and have assisted on several stream and alpine lakes studies.
YES staffers are planning four research expeditions this winter, all relating to wolf reintroduction in Yellowstone. Participants will study foxes, coyotes, elk, and medium-sized carnivores in and around the park.
Marcus said data from this summer's Soda Butte Creek studies will be compiled and analyzed, then published next year.
Contributions to Yellowstone Ecosystem Studies are tax-deductible, and a limited number of expedition scholarships are available.
Caption (scanned photo will be online soon): Using a global-positioning system and a program designed by GeoResearch in Billings, Yellowstone Ecosystem Studies staffer Scott Ladd fixes the point on Soda Butte Creek where volunteer researchers are collecting data. In one of several studies conducted this summer, YES researchers hope to determine how tailings from a mine waste dump above Cooke City have moved downstream into Yellowstone Park, and how and if plants and animals are affected by heavy metals in the tailings. Researchers are also studying Cache Creek.