Endangered

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When Wyoming game warden Joe Pickett received the call every parent dreads, he was standing knee-high in thick sagebrush, counting the carcasses of sage grouse. He was up to twenty-one.

Feathers carpeted the dry soil and clung to the waxy blue-green leaves of the sagebrush within a fifty-foot radius. The air smelled of dust, sage, and blood.

It was late morning in mid-March on a vast brush-covered flat managed by the federal Bureau of Land Management. There wasn’t a single tree for eighteen miles to the west on the BLM land until the rolling hills rocked back on their heels and began their sharp ascent into the snow-covered Bighorn Mountains, which were managed by the U.S. Forest Service. The summits of the mountains were obscured by a sudden late-season snowstorm, and the sky was leaden and close. Joe’s green Game and Fish Ford pickup straddled the ancient two-track road that had brought him up there, the engine idling and the front driver’s door still open from when he’d leapt out. His yellow Labrador, Daisy, was trembling in the bed of the truck, her front paws poised on the top of the bed wall as she stared out at the expanse of land. Twin strings of drool hung from her mouth. She smelled the carnage out on the flat, and she wanted to be a part of it.

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