Eric Krausz' mission has been to help Colvilles restore historic game populations
LINCOLN – Eric Krausz was ready to give in and admit he had been skunked. Using a high powered scope here in February to peer across the Columbia River for bighorn sheep, he was on the brink of leaving with a goose egg after about an hour of what he calls “glassing.”
It wasn’t until a friendly local businessman invited him to scope from his deck that Krausz finally came upon the herd. He found 74 rams and ewes grazing along the steep hillside of Hellsgate Game Reserve.
“This might be the biggest single group I’ve seen,” he said. “There’s about 40 to 60 usually.”
The bighorns he finds represent about 1/3 of the population on the Colville Reservation. Counting them gives him a sense of pride for having contributed to their reintroduction and sustainability, which has resulted in tribal members being allowed to harvest them for food and traditional purposes.
Twenty years from graduating from Washington State University in Pullman, Krausz, who started with the tribes in 2001, has become a key member of the Colville Tribes’ Fish & Wildlife Department. He’s been at the forefront of reintroducing species that hadn’t been familiar with the Colville Reservation in decades.
"Eric is very passionate in managing wildlife populations to become the best they can be," said Richard Whitney, the tribe's senior manager in the wildlife division.
Krausz began as a TFW (timber, fish and wildlife) biologist where he was instrumental in establishing forest harvest guidelines, Whitney said, which promoted and retained valuable elk feeding patches and wildlife cover in timber harvest blocks on the reservation.
During the start of his career, his experience in aerial flights in the drilling industry — where he worked prior to joining the tribes — earned him a major role in the tribe's survey work.
"It was the right place, right time scenario and I took the ball and ran with it," Krausz said.
Whitney said Krausz went well above the status quo.
"Eric singlehandedly took on the Big Game Aerial Flights Sightability program and has successfully applied it beyond its own design," he said, "using one flight to monitor all big game populations (moose, elk, deer, bighorn) versus flying the same area multiple times to count each species."
Krausz said former F&W director Joe Peone gave him the opportunity to have a big hand in the reintroduction of various species on the reservation.
"He kind of gave me the opportunity to spread my wings and try to pick off one of those at a time and it started with bighorn sheep," he said.
The bighorn population was, at one time, limited to Omak Lake, which had been somewhat stagnant, Krausz said, causing CTFW to conduct disease and genetic testing. They decided to transplant two separate shipments of bighorns to Hellsgate Game Reserve, which occurred around 2005.
"Eventually, the idea was we'd take some of those bighorns from Hellsgate and augment the population at Omak Lake," he said.
Then Krausz helped spearhead the movement to reintroduce pronghorn antelope, which happened in 2016. At a bighorn sheep conference in Utah, Krausz met an employee from the Nevada Department of Wildlife who had an abundant number of pronghorn.
"He says if you ever get to the point where you want antelope, we might be able to work with you," Krausz recalled. "When it came to that point, we picked up the phone and made the call and he kept that promise."
Krausz and others from CTFW went to Nevada to present a project plan on the transplant of the animal, which is the fastest ground animal native to North America.
"They were gracious and unanimously agreed to do it," he recalled. "They've been really on board these past two transplants. They've told us they'll be with us the whole process."
In working for the confederated tribes, Krausz aspires to maintain a vision for the betterment of the 12 different tribes and their traditional territories, he said.
"What made up their culture?" he said. "When we identify a species that was a part of that culture, it's more than harvesting, it's bigger than just providing a hunting opportunity."
Though the bighorn sheep transplants were exciting, there was something different about the pronghorns coming back to the reservation — a place it had existed formerly existed for thousands of years but was extirpated about 100 years ago, Krausz said.
"It's almost a little dream-like," he said. "Just not real, because you've spent all the time to get that to happen. And when the trailer door opens and those animals run out it's a big deal. You have guys, grown men that are tribal members, getting emotional. It's a big thing knowing they're part of that. It's contagious, the emotion they're feeling.
"That can't help but give you a sense that you're doing the right thing."
Krausz said CTFW is learning as it's going with pronghorn population, and has to educate the communities regarding the need for fence adjustments in order to increase their survivability. Because they do not jump fences, preferring to go under them, it's not uncommon to find that a pronghorn has been cornered and eaten by predators.
"When you have a landscape that's been fenced for livestock for range, there's a whole thing you've got to educate and that's a slow process," he said. "We knew fences were a concern, but we didn't really feel the full brunt of that until we released that first group and immediately we were starting to go out and get mortality signs on those collars."
In the first month after releasing the first 52 pronghorns in 2016, 11 were found dead, Krausz told the Seattle Times.
Though they were not all caused by fencing, that's the direction CCTFW should go if it wants to sustain its pronghorn population, Krausz said.
"I feel like we have to start as an agency ourselves to show other livestock producers to lead by example," he said. "You need that bottom strand to be 22 to 18 inches up, or putting smooth wire on the bottom strand, or clipping the bottom strand to the strand above it to create a high point so they can go underneath.
"Ultimately for the animal to flourish on the reservation or outer-lying areas they choose as their home, they’ve got to be able to move and have access at different times of the year. The biggest struggle is that and educating people in general about antelope and what they need. There’s still a lot of work to do. We got them here, and that’s half the battle. But we have to start educating."
Maintaining the bighorn sheep population is a similar challenge, he said.
"They have their own plight or drawbacks and that's basically disease that they get from domestic sheep or goats, micro-plasmas, basically bacterial infections," Krausz said. "They'll get pneumonia and die and it can cause major die offs in a population."
For the most part, Krausz says sheep flocks and goats are gone from the reservation. But, he said, there are still hobby farmers with goats.
"A lot of times these people have no idea that these are threats to the wild bighorn sheep population," he said. "So we get the animals here and get to a healthy level so we can sustain harvest, but the whole other half of that is trying to get education to people."
Thus far, there have been record counts of wildlife, collectively, this past year, and Krausz believes wolves reintroducing themselves to the area in 2010 are a cause. He cited a story he was told from a Cree trapper, who didn't trap the wolves because all other animals were more plentiful when wolves were on his reservation.
"Last year we had our highest counts in everything, second highest in moose," he said. "Any time you count a record-high number, it can’t be a bad thing. And we’ve had this top carnivore being on the land for eight years."
With the bighorn and pronghorn reintroductions complete, Krausz is now focusing on future projects. He talked about species he thought could flourish.
—California Bighorns in Hellsgate: "That area fits the characteristics for California Bighorn which is a subspecies of bighorn sheep that likes more open habitat.
—Rocky Mountain Bighorn in the San Poil Valley: "That looks potentially like the habitat you'd find Rocky Mountain bighorn."
—Mountain goats near Hall Creek or Lynx Creek: "We've heard stories from people from Inchelium about mountain goats back in the day (in that area). Guys talking about harvesting them back in the day. We had guys doing fire recon work and there was several different times when they took pictures of mountain goats—once on Central Peak, Disautel Pass, Keller Ridge. It got me thinking, 'they're trying to be here. Even if they're out exploring, they're coming here.'"
—Canada Lynx in habitat above 4,000 feet elevation: "It's a species that once occurred on the bounds of the reservation. We've held management restrictions on timber harvest to help promote lynx habitat."
In reiterating the purpose of reintroductions, Krausz said, "I think from a biological perspective, that ecosystem always functioned with that species as part of it. I think any time you take away a chunk of that, it's gonna have an effect on how that works."
Krausz is closing in on his second decade with the Colville Tribes, and said his fondest moments have been getting to know families on the reservation. Though he's not a member, he had made several lifelong relationships while working with the Colvilles.
"Knowing the work I do helps the culture and reservation, it makes you feel good," Krausz said. "I got nothing personally to gain other than to make this better for future generations of the families and friends I have here."
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