Writers on the Range: Sometimes, the simplest things can help wildlife

"Oh, give me a home where the buffalo roam

Where the deer and the antelope play

Where seldom is heard a discouraging word

And the skies are not cloudy all day"

Sad to say, but that wide-open home on the range that Bing Crosby sings about in Brewster Higley's "Home on the Range," has been steadily diminishing with every passing decade as the Western landscape has been sliced and diced by roads and barbed-wire fences.

Today, only an extremely savvy deer or antelope (or elk, moose or bighorn sheep) can move freely across private and public lands. Wild ungulates may have co-evolved nicely wit...