Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Winter reignites elk feeding debate

Group has purchased 24 tons of hay, and hopes to use it


By JASON KAUFFMAN
Express Staff Writer

     Moving through the deep winter snows that have pushed them out of the surrounding high country, small groups of elk have begun to trail into the outskirts of Sun Valley during the past few weeks.

     Beginning in the late 1970s, those elk followed their keen noses to fresh piles of hay thrown out for them by local landowners and Sun Valley residents who couldn’t stand to see them slowly weakening as the long winter stretched out and the snows continued to deepen.

     Only now, the decades-long tradition of feeding the Sun Valley herd next to the city’s aptly named Elkhorn neighborhood has been interrupted due to a disagreement over whether elk should be fed on private school grounds in the area. No longer can the estimated 150 to 175 elk that winter in the rolling sagebrush hills surrounding the resort community rely on this manmade source of feed.

     For some, that’s as it should be—letting the wild animals survive or succumb on their own. For them, feeding elk is akin to domesticating them—keep the wildness in the wild animal, they say.

     But for others, there’s little doubt that these elk should be fed. The manicured landscapes and large trophy homes have cropped up in their habitat, not the other way around, they argue.

     “It’s a traditional winter area for that little bunch of elk,” said Lee Frost, who retired from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game in 2001 after three decades as a conservation officer in the Wood River Valley. 

     Winter feeding in the Elkhorn area first began sometime in the late 1970s at the Sagewillow Barn, located on a parcel of private land owned by Ed Dumke.

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     About eight years back, the longtime Sun Valley resident and philanthropist gave the barn and surrounding property to The Community School. Dumke also bequeathed to the school his longstanding tradition of feeding elk that winter on the property.

     Those elk arrive from their summering areas in the Sawtooth National Forest’s high country. According to Frost, these down-country migrations begin in places like Hyndman Creek, Parker Gulch, Trail Creek and the long ridge separating Trail Creek and Lake Creek. 

     Last winter, large numbers of elk began congregating in the Sagewillow area, perhaps in anticipation of the feed they’ve received in years past at The Community School. But the practice was discontinued in December 2007 after the nearby Sagewillow Homeowners Association filed a lawsuit against the school. Though it later dropped the suit, the association urged the development of a plan to wean elk from being fed at the Sagewillow Barn.

     Instead, the school responded by removing four tons of hay that was to be used for that purpose, citing its emphasis on education, not litigation. Seeing the annual feeding effort stopped cold, a number of local residents resorted to clandestine feeding under the cover of night.

     The secretive venture led the Sun Valley Police Department to investigate the spreading of hay on Community School property, an act that constituted trespassing, Sun Valley Police Chief Cameron Daggett said at the time.

     The desire to come up with a better—and legal—way to keep feeding the elk prompted several locals to form the Wood River Elk Trust, a small Sun Valley nonprofit that aims to continue the feeding effort begun by Dumke in the hills just east of town.

     “We wanted to do a high ridgeline feeding,” said Christine Willich, one of the primary backers of the trust.

     Earlier this fall, Willich—the wife of Sun Valley Mayor Wayne Willich—and several others approached Community School administrators in an attempt to convince them to change their minds on the elk feeding. The group has already purchased 24 tons of hay now sitting in barns in the Fairfield area—hay that will go unused unless the school changes its position or another local landowner offers space for the feeding effort.

     “They shouldn’t just starve to death,” said Marcee Graff, another active member of the elk trust.

     But citing the advice they received from Fish and Game and the school’s attorney, school officials notified the elk trust in September that no changes would be made.

     “We will not be conducting any feeding operations in the future nor can we provide any equipment, storage or property to support such an operation,” the school’s director of finance, Mike Wade, stated in a letter.

     Graff and Willich express bewilderment with Fish and Game’s opposition to feeding in Elkhorn while at the same time operating the Bullwhacker feeding site for elk west of Ketchum in the Warm Springs Creek drainage. They believe the Elkhorn herd could be a test case for learning how to live with wild elk.

     “They simply are not going away,” Willich said. “We’ve got to find a peaceful coexistence.” 

     Another concern of elk trust backers—as well as for Mayor Willich—is the chance that mountain lions or other predators might be drawn farther into Sun Valley by elk that turn to eating ornamental shrubs because artificial feeding has been stopped.

     “We don’t want predators in our city,” Christine Willich said. 

     Despite calls to the contrary, Fish and Game remains opposed to feeding elk in the Sun Valley area, said Regan Berkley, a Magic Valley regional wildlife biologist for the agency. Berkley restated many of the same arguments against feeding the Elkhorn herd that she had made in an opinion piece in the Idaho Mountain Express last winter.

     She said feed sites close to roads, as in Elkhorn, increase the chances of elk-vehicle collisions. Elk do not remain at feed sites all the time; rather, they will feed on the artificial sources of food before heading out to obtain food elsewhere.

     Like the folks at the elk trust, Berkley is concerned about predators’ being drawn into residential areas by elk, but from a different perspective. She said it’s easier for mountain lions and wolves to hunt elk that are congregated in large groups at artificial feeding sites than those spread out across the hills and valleys.

     Berkley said Fish and Game would like to see elk feeding stopped in Elkhorn. In time, she said, the elk would relearn their migration habits and begin to use the good winter range that still exists in places like Parker and Keystone gulches.

     “There are other places for them to winter,” she said.

     She said the Bullwhacker feeding site is different from the Elkhorn situation because it’s meant to keep those elk from migrating into their former winter haunts. She said wintering areas for elk that summer in the Smoky Mountains on the west side of the valley have seen greater development than the Elkhorn area.

     “These elk used to winter in Ketchum,” she said.  




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