Wildlife Guzzlers

Guzzlers gouge rift between Nevada state agencies - wtop.com

Those of you out west likely know about these but someone please explain just who came up with the idea that wild animals need to be provided water.

What next? Packaged food for them? That could be whole new industry.

This is just about the strangest thing I have ever heard about.

Be safe.

In a region that might go over a year between significant rainfall, if there is no pooling of rainwater there are no animals. The desert has plenty of food (usually) for small animals like birds, wildcats, mice, etc, but often has no water. The idea of a guzzler was born with the importation of the Chuckar from India and Pakistan in the early '30s. Early ranchers in the desert came up with the idea originally to provide water for their range cattle. Guzzlers have evolved from asphalted pads draining into a cistern to metal rooftops that drain into a cistern just below the 'roof'. Works like you wouldn't believe. 6 months after a good downpour, those 500/600gal. cisterns will still have water for the little animals.

When it became a prime objective to restore the population of Desert Bighorn Sheep, the NDoW innovated the concept of a Sheep guzzler. A natural drain area is dammed into a weir which is drainded into large storage tanks. Usually three tanks are located downhill and in series. The water is then piped to a bathtub type basin with a toilet bowl type valve. All animals that need drinking water come into the basin at various times of the day/night and water. Again, it has worked like a charm. The populations of Desert Bighorns have grown to the point that Nevada is exporting them to other states that at one time had a natural population of Bighorns. Other wildlife also make good use of the availability of reliable drinking water.

IMHO, the argument that the guzzlers are depriving livestock of water is a contrived argument with no real basis that the Ranchers are using in an attempt to blackmail money out of the State. Again, IMHO, the real damage to naturally occurring water for livestock is the presence of feral horses. The feral horses will paw at a water seep to the point that natural cement is created damming up the water to all. Neither cattle, deer or elk will cause the same sort of damage. But I digress; don't get me started on the folly of allowing feral horses to run wild on the range. ... Big Cholla

The Big D said:

Guzzlers gouge rift between Nevada state agencies - wtop.com

Those of you out west likely know about these but someone please explain just who came up with the idea that wild animals need to be provided water.

What next? Packaged food for them? That could be whole new industry.

This is just about the strangest thing I have ever heard about.

Be safe.

Click to expand...

Having lived in Arizona now for almost 24 years (born and raised in the mid-west), I'll see if I can help explain, at least from my view point.

Before we started populating the heck out of the western states with people and very large cities, there was a fair amount of wet washes and some rivers (dry during parts of the year, wet during others) and even some permanent lakes that provided wildlife with water.

In moves the people....building vacation houses and/or cities around anything that remotely resembled a lake, looked green, and/or might be damp. In many states, farmers and ranchers have been pumping ground water now for generations and it is constantly lowering the water table. These activities can cause the more shallow watering holes and such to dry up or be dry much longer during the year.

At the same time.....people obtained lake acreage and proceed to build houses, marinas, recreation areas, parks, etc. all around the body of water. You won't find bighorn sheep walking down the highway very often, past your lakeside house, to drink from the lake near your docked boat.

And of course, with all these people now populating the western regions, comes those that want to hunt. (that is not a negative comment by the way) They see the wildlife vs. civilization issues that come up and so in order to help maintain the wildlife in the region, they provide man made watering solutions.

I believe the rest of the issues are pretty well covered in the above link.

Anyway, that is my spin on it. I've spent 24 years off-roading and camping in Arizona and have come across a number of these guzzlers. One of them had underground storage tanks with solar cells to run the water pump. And yes, nearby, was some desert bighorn sheep....the first ones I had ever seen in Arizona at that time.

I hope this helps explain why wild animals may need to be provided with water. Move out about 100 million people that have screwed up the local landscapes west of the Mississippi and you probably won't have any more problems.

As for packaged food....I believe you are several decades behind the times. I do believe the eastern and south eastern portion of the US is much more inclined to plant and cultivate food plots for deer more than any other part of the country. That is a multimillion dollar a year business.

Thanks for the explanations, guys. I now understand...a bit.

Be safe.

Welcome to the wonderful wide world of western water rights issues! The article is an example of the never ending controversy around allocating resources between public wildlife on public land, and private livestock on public land (leased at below-cost rates to private ranchers by the BLM, Forest Service, and state agencies). The guzzler "issue" is more than just quibbling about the modest consumption of captured water by wildlife, because the availability of water where it wouldn't naturally exist can "move" wildlife, elk, for instance, into areas where they normally wouldn't be. This may require ranchers to stand the expense of fencing private alfalfa fields to exclude elk, for example...

Public-land ranchers in the west generally pay lip service to stewardship and conservation issues right up the point when it costs them a thin dime or plugged nickel, and then the masks and gloves come off --- and wildlife generally loses. Public land ranching in the west is an environmentally tragic anachronism.

Out here more blood has been spilled over water than anyything else, even women! Now they don't usually settle it with lead but with litigation; much more expensive and the outcome less predictable.

We hunted deer about 50 miles East of Fallon. NV. this last Oct. Guzzlers were there alright but the pipes leading to the tanks were torn up by wild horses. Therefore they didn't have any water in the tank. BLM or the Nevada Fish & Game isn't the problem, wild horses are. The tree huggers as usual are the culprits. Enough said.

Another good reason is that it makes it easier to shoot them around the "water hole"

CAJUNLAWYER said:

Another good reason is that it makes it easier to shoot them around the "water hole"

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That is exactly what I was thinking. Where I live, we bait animals in with buckets of corn. I guess out west I'd just need a bucket of water to get a nice trophy shot.

Here water gets more critters than feed.