Thursday, June 14, 2012

Facts About Arapho

There is a staff of six employees here at Arapho NWR.  It was established in 1967.  It has a total of 23,464 acres made up of a mix of sagebrush-grassland uplands, irrigated and sub-irrigated meadows, wetlands and riparian areas.  There are 4 satellite refuges in Wyoming:  Pathfinder, Bamforth, Hutton Lake, and Mortenson Lake.  Also, the refuge has acreage on Pole Mountain about 6 miles southwest of headquarters and 2,176 acres on the Chandler Ranch unit nearby.  Elevation ranges from 8,100 to 8,700 feet.


We are located in an intermountain glacial basin called North Park. There is a six mile auto wildlife tour.  We have a one half mile loop Moose-Goose Nature Trail where you can walk through river riparian area and a meadow where I got the photo of the moose.  There are as many as 15 to 20 moose on the refuge at any one time.


There are only two trailer pads at the present but more are planned.


I thought South Texas was bad with wind and dust, but this area is maybe even worse.  The nights are very comfortable getting down in the 40's.


Ann Timberman is the project leader and Charles Mathis is deputy manager.  Charles is our supervisor.


There is a total of 88 wetlands, but some are dry!!!


Until next time...

3 comments:

  1. I got to catch up on your latest blogs this afternoon. Looks like you're at a great place. How far are you from town? (grocery shopping?)... what will you be doing there? Love the moose shots!

    ReplyDelete
  2. We are about 60 miles from Steamboat..70 from Laramie, Wy. There is a small grocery store about 10 miles, but they are expensive. The next blog will be about what we are doing.

    ReplyDelete
  3. We visited there once and really enjoyed it. We did the auto tour route that starts near the HQ area, and a second one that was west of there and included a Prairie Dog town. We somehow missed the Moose/Goose walking trail. But it was really cold and windy so maybe we didn't look that hard!!!

    Mark

    ReplyDelete