Left high and dry The worst drought in a century is taking a toll on western wildlife

A month after he discovered the emaciated carcasses of 55 wild horses around a dried-up water trough, Gale Bennett can't get the horrific skin-and-bone images out of his mind. "I can still see them at night," says the veteran wild-horse specialist at Utah's King Top Herd Management Area. Bennett had checked on the King Top herd three days before the disaster. But a malfunctioning float on the trough cut the horses off from the only water source they had left after three years of drought.

When he returned, scores of animals lay dead in the 100-degree heat, among them antelope and deer that also relied on the trough. "It was heartbreaking," laments Bennett, who has worked for the wild-horse program of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) for 28 years. "I've never seen it this bad. If we don't get some rain soon, we could lose more animals."

Lean years. While western residents face watering restrictions and campfire bans amid threats of more forest fires, the region's wildlife is bearing the brunt of the worst drought in more than a century in Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico. Years of below-average snowfall and scant summer rains have depleted aquifers, springs, and streams, and withered vegetation. Animals seeking better conditions often encounter ranchers' fences or new subdivisions. It's too soon to estimate the toll, but some populations are surviving only with the help of wildlife managers. "We're doing everything we can," says Todd Malmsbury, spokesman for Colorado's Division of Wildlife. "But in the face of a drought this severe, there's no easy or good solutions."

Their plight is hard to overlook, as hungry and thirsty animals stray across highways and into yards. "We've had 15 bears hit by cars this summer, which is much higher than normal," says Melody Miller, a district wildlife manager in Durango, Colo., where early-season frosts followed by the drought all but wiped out the bears' traditional diet of chokecherries and acorns. "They're getting desperate for food . . . and it's only August."

She expects problems to worsen as the bears try to bulk up before their annual hibernation, increasing their calorie intake from about 3,000 a day in early summer to 10 times that. Those that don't build up enough fat face starvation in their dens. Underweight females may end their pregnancies by reabsorbing their fetuses into their bodies or bear cubs too weak to survive. "That could have a big impact on the population," Miller says. Elk could also suffer this winter, when scrub and berries will be scarce.

The drought isn't expected to push either species onto the "endangered" list. But others are more vulnerable. Where June's Hayman fire burned 137,000 tinder-dry acres southwest of Denver, forest workers are racing to restore key habitat of five endangered species, among them bald eagles, spotted owls, and a rare butterfly. And with many Colorado streams and rivers flowing at 10 percent of their norm, sluggish, warm water is stressing native trout species. Last month, desperate to rescue rare greenback cutthroats (Colorado's state fish), fisheries biologists scooped up over 150 stunted specimens from the nearly dry South Apache Creek, shifted some to another stream, and took others to a state hatchery, where they will remain until water levels return to normal.

Gale Bennett is taking similar measures to save Utah's wild horses. Although he and BLM officials had to put most of the horses they've corralled up for adoption, "I kept 20 of the best young horses," he says, "and I'll release them again when the springs come back."

Whenever that is.