Published June 25, 2026 01:18PM<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
I\u2019m standing at Mathers Campground in the Grand Canyon at one of more than 300 sites, staring straight into the eyes of a 700-pound elk. Next to me is Brady Dunne, a wildlife biologist with the National Park Service (NPS), and his partner, Blue. She\u2019s not your usual park ranger\u2014Blue is a Catahoula Leopard Hound, specially tasked\u00a0with training the park\u2019s wild ungulates to stay away from areas where people frequent.<\/p>\n
And she takes her job very seriously.<\/p>\n
\u201cGrand Canyon has a what I would call a chronic elk problem,\u201d Dunne told me. \u201cJust like in Yellowstone, elk from outside the park have been coming in for 20, 25 years, and over that time have gotten what we call habituated. We have not been able to find a solution for that as of yet.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s the morning of June 15, and I got up especially early to beat the Arizona heat. After meeting Dunne and Blue at the historic El Tovar Hotel, we hop in our trucks and go on patrol, driving through the park in search of human-habituated elk. Dunne\u2019s radio clicks on\u2014his wildlife rangers have spotted a large female hanging out at Mather Campground, one of five key places NPS staff have deemed high visitor use areas and an elk movement hotspot. (Other locations include El Tovar Hotel, Grand Canyon Visitor Center, Maswik Lodge, and Grand Canyon School.)<\/p>\n We park our vehicles along a narrow road bookended by Ponderosa pine, Pinyon, and Juniper trees. Dunne opens the hatch of his SUV and carefully leashes Blue. We walk, side-by-side, calmly and quietly, crunching over pine cones. Once within 20 feet, Dunne commands Blue to bark, activating her herding instincts to ward off the elk. Within seconds, the elk is up, running off into the distance.<\/p>\n I\u2019d first learned of Blue in May, when she started patrolling parts<\/a> of the South Rim. She\u2019s not the first four-legged ranger to take on such a task. In July 2016, Glacier National Park employed Gracie, a border collie professionally trained to move bighorn sheep and mountain goats out of popular areas. Further south in California, a Karelian Bear Dog named Yoshi is currently warding off bears<\/a> in Yosemite.<\/p>\n \u201cIt opens a lot of doors for a lot more conservation work using this new tool,\u201d Alex Mueller, biological science technician at Grand Canyon National Park, told me.<\/p>\nOn Patrol with Blue<\/h2>\n