Feeding Program For Elk Has Its Supporters, Critics

Slam. Bam. Bang. Clang. The rear gate and sides of a new blue squeeze chute closed behind a cow elk struggling to get free.

The frightened animal, trapped by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game at an elk feeding ground near Stanley, was being processed for transfer to a winter range where she would find less snow and more to eat.

She is one of 123 moved during the past month from the Sawtooth Valley to ranges about 100 miles north near Panther Creek and Corn Creek. By moving the elk, biologists hope to reduce not only pressure on the range, but also the number of elk who might learn to depend on winter feeding in the Sawtooth Valley.

Deep, crusted snow has driven about 500 elk down to the bottom lands, putting their age-old struggle for survival in clear view of local residents and passing motorists.

“When there are elk starving beside the roadside, it’s very difficult for people to embrace the harshness of nature where 10 to 20 percent mortality is normal for a population,” said Cathy Baer, program director for the Sawtooth Wildlife Council and a member of a citizen’s advisory group that recommended feeding the elk late in January.

“Yet death is a part of the bigger picture, the web of life.”

Concerned the elk would starve without help, some residents began feeding them in December. In addition, Fish and Game started feeding about 225 elk Jan. 28, and now expects to be feeding about 385 head for the next few months.

About 23 have died and half of those were killed by vehicles, Stanley game warden Gary Gadwa said.

As the elk head each morning for the feed troughs, a debate over the welfare program continues. Some residents, like outfitter Ron Gillett, says people can’t just stand by and watch them starve.

“The statement that elk need to fare for themselves is baloney!” Gillett wrote in a letter to Ketchum’s Mountain Express newspaper. “It may have been that way years ago but it is not relevant today. Man has caused much of the current wintering problems for elk and other species and man should help solve these problems.”

Feeding the elk each winter would help them get through the winter, and also could help attract tourists to the area, he said.

“We want a visible elk herd within the boundaries of what can be handled,” Gillett said. “We depend on tourism and that elk herd brings us money.”

Fish and Game officials worry, however, that winter feeding will change the elks’ habits.

“People wonder why we fight this feeding so much,” said Mark Hurley, who oversees the Stanley feeding program. “Just one time and you interrupt their migration patterns. It only takes a few years and you’re stuck.”

Hurley points to the National Elk Refuge in Jackson, Wyo., as an example of what happens when elk lose their migration instincts. In 1912, elk began coming in to feed on hay thrown to cattle by local homesteaders. When the elk numbers increased and began to crowd the cattle, they thought feeding the animals in a separate place might help solve the problem.

This winter the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is feeding nearly 11,000 head - about 3,200 more than the 25,000-acre refuge can support during the summer months.

Now nearly domesticated, the herd is subject to disease because it congregates on the feed grounds. An outbreak of tuberculosis in the herd would be disastrous, refuge biologists say. Brucellosis, which causes cows to abort, already has infected the herd.

Years ago, when local residents began feeding the elk, not many were coming to the feed grounds. But the herd’s size has grown, and so has the number of non-migrating elk.

Hurley estimates that about a quarter of the area’s 4,000-head summer population now stay in the valley each winter. The rest of them scatter each fall to less wintry ranges in the East Fork of the Salmon, the Middle Fork, the Wood River Valley and Garden Valley.