{"id":40702,"date":"2022-05-10T01:24:21","date_gmt":"2022-05-10T07:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wildlife-at-home-among-mesa-verde-national-parks-ancient-dwellings\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:57:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:57:10","slug":"wildlife-at-home-among-mesa-verde-national-parks-ancient-dwellings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wildlife-at-home-among-mesa-verde-national-parks-ancient-dwellings\/","title":{"rendered":"Wildlife at home among Mesa Verde National Park\u2019s ancient dwellings"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=ced77fd0-e857-5ff8-aa6d-5450ca94c02e&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"720\" height=\"584\" alt=\"A fox peers into a monitoring camera at the Spring House site in Mesa Verde National Park. (Courtesy Mesa Verde National Park)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">A fox peers into a monitoring camera at the Spring House site in Mesa Verde National Park. (Courtesy Mesa Verde National Park)<\/span><span class=\"credit\">cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p><!-- gallery:3e6456cb-f036-4494-b232-c426a8119613 --><\/p>\n<p>When the tourists leave the cliff houses at Mesa Verde National Park, wildlife will wander in for a photo shoot.<\/p>\n<p>Cameras monitor the condition of ancient dwellings and watch for looting and trespassing humans.<\/p>\n<p>But when wildlife show up and trigger the cameras, it\u2019s a \u201chighlight of the monitoring program \u2013 much better than seeing people illegally entering sites,\u201d said Kay Barnett, a park archaeologist, in an email.<\/p>\n<p>Here are a few favorites over the years. They include a black bear, bobcat, foxes and a ring-tailed cat, which is a member of the raccoon family.<\/p>\n<p>Squeaks, a 2-year-old mountain lion living at the park since August 2020, is also featured on a game camera and appears to be doing well. He made headlines after a 558-mile journey from central New Mexico recorded on a GPS collar. The trek included swimming across Navajo Reservoir twice.<\/p>\n<p><em id=\"emphasis-592cd821179606cd17893ab7e0880f13\"><a href=\"mailto:jmimiaga@the-journal.com\">jmimiaga@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>cameras capture a variety of species in and around ancient dwellings <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[173,60,603],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-40702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-mesa-verde-national-park","tag-montezuma-county","tag-wildlife"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40702"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":84734,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40702\/revisions\/84734"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40702"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=40702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}