Last Tuesday, five cygnet trumpeter swans were released into the O’Dell Creek wetlands, south of Ennis on Granger Ranch property.
Cygnets are young birds, around 100 days old, according to Jeff Laszlo who owns the Granger Ranch.
“This is the fourth time we’ve released swans,” he said. “We have one more planned release, but I think we may keep doing it until we actually see signs of nesting in the project area or elsewhere.”
On Aug. 25, representatives from NorthWestern Energy, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and Madison River Foundation gathered with Sen. Steve Daines and residents of the Madison Valley for the release.
The release site is also the location of a 10-plus year wetland restoration project.
“We have a decade of wetland restoration down there,” Laszlo said.
Laszlo said he heard it takes five or six years to establish nesting swans in an area, which was confirmed by FWP wildlife biologist Claire Gower.
“We have a project in the Blackfoot Valley – near Ovando – where we’ve been releasing swans for a long time,” she said. “It took them five or six years of releases for nesting to really start going. We’re hoping this goes the same way.”
Why O’Dell Creek?
In 2008, Madison Valley wetlands were evaluated to determine which ones would be valuable for swan restoration, as part of the Pacific Flyaway Trumpeter Swan Implementation Plan, Gower explained.
“The idea is to reverse declining trends of nesting trumpeter swans in the tri-state area – Montana, Idaho and Wyoming,” she said. “In around 2010, O’Dell Creek was selected as the best place (in the Madison Valley).
Gower said O’Dell Creek rose to the top of the list of potential release sites for multiple reasons – the area has a lot of forage for swan food, large expanses of water they need for taking off and landing, there is open water year round because the wetlands are stream fed, there is vegetation that serves as concealment from predators and there is room for future nesting.
“We’ve been releasing since 2012,” she said. “The Fish and Wildlife Commission approved it for a five year release. This was our fourth release.”
Since the releases started, there is some evidence of nesting trumpeter swans in the Madison Valley, but Gower said it is not confirmed if those swans are some that were released. Gower believes the project will continue after next year’s release, saying, “we will certainly be requesting future releases.”
Last year, trumpeter swans nested at the south end of Ennis Lake and around the chain of lakes at the south end of the Madison Valley, near Cliff and Wade lakes.
“The released birds are serving more as decoys for other birds,” Gower said. “We are hoping they jump start the nesting process.”
Birds benefit the wetlands
Laszlo said the presence of swans has improved the O’Dell Creek wetlands and that the released birds have drawn more swans to the area.
“We now have 30-50 swans spending the winter there,” he said.
Tara Luna is a botanist and vegetation ecologist who has been working on the O’Dell Creek restoration project for five years.
“Foraging activity by swans and other waterfowl have resulted in steady increases in canopy cover. The trumpeter swan’s exceptionally long neck lengthand bill lengthallow these birds to access (rhizomes) and tubers at deeper water depths and deeper into the soil profile than other waterfowl species,” Luna said. “Tubers and rhizomes can then be moved upward through the soil profile by foraging, redistributed at shallower soil depths, triggering shoot dormancy break and regrowth the following spring.”
In other words, Luna explained that the birds actively assist the restoration of the constructed wetland ponds by increasing submergent plant cover.
“Submergent plants in turn hold sediments, attenuate storage and flow, improve water quality and provide cover for aquatic and fish,” she added. “Ultimately, people benefit as well, by improved water quality, storage and flow for downstream users of the Madison River that in turn support the prevailing economies of this valley and the state.”