For the week of January 21 - 27, 2004

Elk feeding
creates dichotomy

Idaho Fish and Game
discourages private feeding

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"Some years, you could lose every elk up here if you didn’t feed them. We’ve taken all the winter range, or most of it."

— MONTE STRALEY, Wood River Elk Trust co-organizer

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Wood River Elk Trust seeks support

According to the Wood River Elk Trust, local elk herds need your help.

According to Gary Shelton, co-organizer for the Wood River Elk Trust, it costs about $50 per elk for the winter to provide supplemental food.

"As we take their homes and food away from them, we have the responsibility to provide for their future," he said.

Send tax-deductible contributions to:

Wood River Elk Trust, Inc.
PO Box 2324
Ketchum, Idaho 83340

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By GREG STAHL
Express Staff Writer

According to Monte Straley, the winter of 2001-2002 was particularly hard on Wood River Valley elk populations.

"Every elk that was not fed was dead in the spring," claims Straley, co-organizer of the Wood River Elk Trust.

Elk won’t pass up a free meal when it’s made easily available. Express file photo by Willy Cook

 

But Idaho Department of Fish and Game officials disagree with that claim. Biologist point out that elk evolved for survival in harsh mountain climates, including Idaho’s long, cold winters.

Nonetheless, Straley and a handful of other local volunteers have been raising money to feed local elk populations for more than 12 years.

They feel is important to feed the animals in areas where human development has displaced the animals from their historic winter range, Straley said. But it’s a practice the Idaho Department of Fish and Game discourages, which creates an interesting dichotomy of wildlife management philosophies.

According to Gary Shelton, the other co-organizer for the Wood River Elk Trust, local elk need help, particularly this year, to successfully make it through the winter.

"We are in the middle of another harsh winter, with snowpacks above average for this date," he wrote in a letter seeking donations to pay for feed, as well as habitat restoration projects. "As a last resort, local groups are feeding elk in areas where their historical winter range has been reduced to houses and their down-valley migration routes blocked by human development."

According to Shelton, the elk trust is helping to feed more than 90 elk on the Warm Springs Golf Course in Ketchum, where tourists can ride horse-drawn sleighs to view the animals at the feed site. Additional small groups of elk are being fed in scattered locations throughout the Wood River Valley, including an annual feed sites on south-facing slopes in Elkhorn and in Bellevue.

Although Fish and Game feeds elk at several locations statewide, including a site in the Wood River Valley, Straley said their effort is usually too little too late.

"Their idea of feeding time—it’s way too late," he said. "If you’ve got that much snow and that much cold, you’ve already lost."

Hailey-based Fish and Game Conservation Officer Roger Olson said the department began feeding elk on Monday, Jan. 12, about 10 miles up Warm Springs Creek above Ketchum. The goal, however, is not to help the animals make it through the winter, he said.

"The reason we did that is not because elk are deteriorating in body condition, but to hold them up higher in the drainage and not have them run down to Ketchum," he said. "They look in excellent condition, like all the elk in this country."

This is a point on which local elk feeding advocates and state officials strongly disagree.

According to Fish and Game Wildlife Biologist Bret Stansberry, the department seeks to maintain big game populations under natural conditions, allowing the animals to feed on naturally available forage.

"The department feels that big game numbers should be in harmony with the amount of winter forage available," he said. "Fish and Game does not condone providing supplemental feed in order to sustain herds of big game above what the winter range can normally support."

But Shelton and Straley pointed out that most of the animals’ traditional winter range in the Wood River Valley is buried beneath subdivisions.

"Some years, you could lose every elk up here if you didn’t feed them," Straley said. "We’ve taken all the winter range, or most of it."

Even during easy winters, feeding elk helps prevent the animals from moving into subdivisions and eating ornamental vegetation, and from crossing roads and highways unnecessarily, Straley said.

Olson, however, said there is winter range in the Wood River Valley that elk do not use when they are fed. Also, he said feed sites create an unhealthy environment in which animals can easily transmit diseases and cause environmental damage. Feed sites are also locations where predators may be attracted to pick off easy meals.

"If you look at both deer and elk in a wild situation, you don’t see 100 elk standing together," Olson said. "They break up into small units of three, four, five or a dozen. If they don’t stay concentrated, they can make it on their own.

"By feeding them, we are also discouraging them from doing what they are designed to do."

Further, Olson said it is perfectly natural for wild animals to die during the winter.

"It’s part of the selection process," he said. "It’s only when high numbers of wildlife die, and that’s when we approve of supplemental feeding."

But Straley maintains that the local feeding efforts are simply designed to help the animals cope with the unnatural impacts human development of the valley has caused.

"Elk can be fed very successfully," he said. "It may not be the best thing to do, but it’s the only option you have some years."

Reiterating what both groups already know, Stansberry pointed out that the issue of feeding is a very contentious issue.

"Winter feeding of wildlife is a very controversial issue wherever it occurs, generating very passionate feelings on both sides of the issue," he said. "The main thing is to give serious thought to the pros and cons of feeding before jumping on the feeding bandwagon. A thoughtful approach to this dilemma will be much better for the animals you are trying to help."

 

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