Stop and smell the horses
July 18, 2025On one of the many farm ponds and lakes sprinkled throughout Sheridan county, a pair of Trumpeter Swans is quietly doing something wonderful. They are nesting here, and have done so for four years.
The simple act of nesting, hatching chicks, and raising them may seem massively un-special to many of us. All birds do it. This particular nest, though, is one of very few (perhaps as few as two) Trumpeter Swan nests east of the continental divide in Wyoming. It is the only one in Sheridan County. For the world’s largest waterfowl species, it is a little bit of a success story.
Trumpeter Swans are a refreshing tale of animal conservation going right. This pair may be the only one in the Sheridan area, but they have a village of support in the form of a diverse and feisty band of humans invested in their success.
TEETERING
Trumpeter Swans are migratory birds whose nesting and wintering ranges together covered the northern half of the North American continent, once upon a time. As with many animals, their beauty and size created high demand for feathers and skins, which alongside habitat loss led to an almost total population collapse in the late 1920s. By 1930, a small population of about 70 birds in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) was thought to be the only one left.
Aggressive conservation measures helped to bring Trumpeter Swans back from the brink. To protect what was believed to be the last Trumpeter Swan flock, the Red Rock Lakes Wildlife Refuge was created in 1935 to the west of Yellowstone National Park. In hindsight, biologists believe there were a few scattered swans left in Canada as well, but it was the GYE Trumpeter Swans who provided the basis for population recovery across the continent.
For the next several decades, Trumpeter Swan populations continued to teeter between stability and decline in many areas, spurring additional repopulation and habitat restoration efforts. In 1986 there was a petition to list them as Threatened in the GYE under the Endangered Species Act. In the same year, the Wyoming Wetlands Society (WWS), a 501(c)3 nonprofit based in Jackson, was founded. This was the year that Wyoming Trumpeter Swan management in its current form gained momentum.
The WWS is the lynchpin of the Trumpeter Swan action in our state. It is a private nonprofit that focuses on wetland habitat restoration. On behalf of the wetlands, it breeds and releases Trumpeter Swans through a program modeled after a hugely successful Peregrine Falcon reintroduction program in Wyoming (it also relocates beavers, a project which is actually super swan-relevant). Through collaboration with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD), state agencies in Montana and Idaho, and the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), a robust restoration, release, and monitoring program for the GYE Trumpeter Swans is ongoing.
Because of the intense focus that started a century ago on the GYE Trumpeter Swans, they remain the primary focus for WGFD and WWS. “Pioneer” swans like our Sheridan nesting pair do not yet represent a well-established flock that requires or warrants management or additional support. This does not make them less significant — on the contrary, these swans link two far corners of Wyoming in more ways than one. This pair is a demonstration of the incredible, positive impact that human collaboration can have on another species.
THE MOTHERSHIP
The mothership
Our male Sheridan swan, band number 3A6, was born to a breeding pair at the WWS Jackson Hole facility in 2017. On a sprawling property of rolling green hills and 1-2 acre ponds, nine nesting pairs of Trumpeter Swans have reigned over separate territories and produced cygnets (swan chicks) for the last 18 years. This year, six pairs produced a total of 30 cygnets. All the babies are destined for release unless they are needed to restock the breeding population.
The original breeder swans were hatched from eggs legally collected straight up north in Canada, between 2007 and 2009. Accessing nesting sites by helicopter, WWS Program Director Bill Long and his colleagues collected some eggs from each nest, returned to Wyoming, and incubated and reared them. Swan 3A6, and all Trumpeter Swans released in this region so far, are descendants of birds hatched from these eggs.
Just this summer, four WWS yearlings were released on Eden Reservoir in Sweetwater County (outside of Farson). All four have tracking collars, which should allow biologists to track their movements. Before releasing birds with radio collars (there are several different types that WWS has tried out), Bill does “test runs” of the collars at the facility to make sure they don’t interfere with behavior, feeding, foraging, and general comfort.
The WWS swans are managed in a mostly hands-off manner, despite being captive-bred. “Captive birds and wild birds are on two ends of the spectrum,” Bill says. “Our birds are in the middle. They won’t fly off the minute they see a human. Nor will they come up to one looking for a handout.”
