Meet our Guests: Ray Bransfield and Peter Sanzenbacher

Ray Bransfield

Biologist, USFWS

Ventura, CA

Peter Sanzenbacher

Biologist, USFWS

Yucca Valley, CA

11/11/18

The Dumont Dunes ORV area in Death Valley is not especially picturesque. The dun hills are scabbed by tire tracks and there are few plants, leaving the dust and sand free to be flung about by the regularly passing winds.

Ray Bransfield and Peter Sanzenbacher, employees of the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), squinted into the day’s wind and struggled to be heard over the sound of the child’s dirt bike that buzzed wide circles around us. Historically, local ORV clubs came to the dunes to race and ride illegally. As multiple-use pressure mounted on management agencies, the dunes became a designated ORV area in recognition of this historical usage. But, as we asked Ray, why? Why reward illegal recreation with an official designation?

If you were to follow Ray’s thumb across the highway, you might find an endangered desert tortoise wending its leisurely way through the sagebrush. These creatures, resilient and rare, face an embattled future in the Mojave and Sonoran Deserts against long odds of habitat fragmentation and degradation. ORV recreationists, notably, have been known to accidentally crush the slow-moving tortoises—their desert camouflage, while effective protection against natural predators, proves their undoing in the face of children on ATVs.

Much of Ray’s and Peter’s work has been to mitigate these instances in which recreation impacts wildlife. Desert tortoises are not the only potential victims: gesticulating in excitement, Peter provided an animated explanation of the spadefoot toad, which, mistaking the rumble of an ATV motor for the sound of thunder, will rise from its subterranean refuge in hopes of rain. As Ray explained, Dumont Dunes are a sacrifice zone, a place where extractive uses are concentrated to preserve habitat elsewhere.

Ray is approaching his retirement after decades with the USFWS, while Peter still has much of his career left ahead of him, and their work provides some hope that future reconciliation between recreation and conservation of public lands might move at a pace faster than a desert tortoise’s.

By Noah Dunn

Photos by Abby Hill

Meet our Guests: Dan Wenk

Dan Wenk

Superintendent, Yellowstone National Park

Mammoth Hot Springs, MT

9/9/2018

The first thing Dan Wenk asks of us when we arrive at our meeting point within the Yellowstone National Park administration buildings at Mammoth Hot Springs is to sit down with him. Sitting on damp, elk scat-covered grass petting his lab Juno, it is difficult to imagine this man as the highest-ranking official in Yellowstone. But the passion he speaks with for not only the ingenuity of the park but also for the incredible conservation efforts that have taken place, makes it clear he is the man in charge.

Wenk has worked tirelessly to form the world’s first national park into more than a tourist destination. He is a champion for bison protection and has put them along with other controversial animals such as wolves at the forefront of the Yellowstone identity. The most common and least understood species here, though, will always be Homo sapiens. 

“For those interested in public lands management and what we do and why, Yellowstone is…” he trails off searching for the words “… it’s complicated” he finished. And complicated it is.  Balancing the needs of grizzly bears, wolves, elk, bison, tourism and conservation is by no means an easy job. One of the most complicating aspect is the challenge of managing an ecological island within a land that does not have the same conservation mindset as Wenk. The wild animals he has been tasked to manage do not obey the borders the surrounding communities do and they often do not live long enough to make it back into the park.

As if on cue, a huge bull elk bugles from across the street where it has been casually meandering its way across the fields of manicured lawns and asphalt. The tourists itching to get closer look are being controlled by a ranger in an orange vest. Proof of the big job Wenk has of managing not only the wildlife but also the people who come to it.

By Eliza Van Wetter