Elk feeding in the Elkhorn neighborhood of Sun Valley may have stopped, but the controversy surrounding the practice is far from over.
"We would love to do it, but the Elkhorn Association killed it last year," said Christine Willich, president of the Wood River Elk Trust.
In past years, the trust has spread hay in the area in an attempt to boost the food supply of the herd of elk that winters there. Local elk herds used to be able to feast on human-provided feed at the Community School's campus on Sagewillow Road.
That operation was terminated in 2007, and the trust offered an alternative plan to spread hay on a ridge above the cul-de-sac of Fireweed Road, an area owned by the Sun Valley Elkhorn Association.
The plan was halted in April due to a permitting issue, but the association has made it clear in the past that it does not support feeding elk.
Willich says that feeding elk is crucial to their survival, and without feedings in Elkhorn, the animals could wander into more populated areas.
"Tourists stop and they think it's a petting zoo," Willich said, describing the problems that occur when elk wander into town or onto the highway. "They walk right up to them, but these are wild animals. There is the potential for people to be injured."
Even the Idaho Department of Fish and Game recognizes that elk need to be kept out of populated areas, said Kelton Hatch, spokesman for the department.
Fish and Game has a feeding site west of Ketchum called Bullwhacker, which Hatch said is an entirely different scenario from the feeding in Elkhorn.
"It's a bait situation, to bait them from out of town," Hatch said. "The reason we have these sites is to try and keep elk out of the Warm Springs area."
"This is what makes us look crazy," Willich said. "They're telling us we can't feed, and yet they feed."
Hatch said the Bullwhacker site is a special case, and that Fish and Game does not feed elk very often. The official policy, Hatch said, is to discourage citizens from feeding the animals.
"We don't recommend feeding outside of any emergency situation," Hatch said.
Willich said the trust is watching the elk herds to determine whether the animals are suffering from an emergency situation, and that the trust is ready to help if necessary.
"If they're looking really starved and start to eat pine needles, then we'll probably step in," Willich said.
Pine needles are not natural forage for the elk, and eating them signals that the animals are getting desperate.
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But Hatch said citizens often think elk are starving when they are just adapting to winter conditions.
"Elk and deer lose weight in the winter," he said. "It's just the way nature made them."
Elk live off of the fat reserves they store on their backs in the summer, Hatch said, and the weight loss in leaner months is misinterpreted by non-biologists.
"People look at these elk and think they're starving to death," he said.
From there, it's a slippery slope, Hatch said, as people try to rectify the problem.
"They see two or three and throw them a little hay. Next thing you know, there are 30, 40 or 50 elk," he said. "We just have a lot of issues when people start feeding at random sites."
For example, Hatch pointed to one instance when a woman stopped her car on state Highway 75 south of Hailey and spread hay just off the shoulder.
"That was just baiting elk down to the side of the road," he said.
Elk drawn to the Elkhorn area for feed feast off of ornamental landscaping, but create larger problems, Hatch said, including attracting predators.
"Mountain lions and wolves eat elk, and if there's a herd, it can attract predators," he said. Then again, he added, "You've got predators wandering through the Wood River Valley all the time. We've put a resort town in the middle of premier wildlife habitat."
Willich said she saw a wolf and a mountain lion fight over an elk carcass in her backyard a few years ago, where she says six to 10 elk regularly bed down for the night. Still, she said, elk rely on the feedings they've been receiving in the area for more than 35 years. The fact that the elk haven't been fed there in three years and still haven't migrated to other areas shows they depend on human-provided hay, she said.
Hatch said visiting feed sites is determined generationally, and it could take up to six years for the herd to completely disperse. As for the argument that elk rely on outside sources for food, Hatch said that's not the case.
"Elk have survived here for thousands of years without people feeding them," he said. "Nature has given them the tools to survive. When people step in and start feeding them, they take some of that natural instinct away."
Hatch said the elk can still find natural winter habitat despite housing development in the Wood River Valley.
"A lot of those elk are stopped by the feed sites, when they would normally migrate down toward Shoshone," he said. "There's plenty of other areas where elk can go."
Katherine Wutz: kwutz@mtexpress.com
Elk feed on hay in Elkhorn. Though elk haven’t found human-provided feed in Elkhorn in three years, the herd has yet to disperse.
