Fickle Public Seals The Fate Of Visiting Elk

Unpublished correction: The name of Allison Cowles was misspelled in the published text.

The elk living in one of Spokane’s oldest and most elegant neighborhoods arrived last winter.

She probably became separated from the herd that routinely winters around Browne Mountain to the south of town.

Elk in that herd have good reason to be confused.

Each year, more and more members of the human population move south of the city in search of five acres of paradise not too far from a school bus route and with good access to shopping.

So this elk, who was a few weeks pregnant, apparently became confused about her traditional pathway.

She began to travel a greenbelt of still undeveloped lands, city parks and neighborhood back yards that eventually lead into the heart of Spokane’s South Hill neighborhood.

A small woods of 20 acres or so still can be found just down the hill from Rockwood Boulevard and up the hill from Southeast Boulevard.

Throughout the winter, residents of this neighborhood began seeing the elk.

Some began to put out water, and salt.

Others simply ignored the beast.

All went well until spring when the petunias and flowering trees began to bloom.

The elk thought she had awakened in a candy store.

Well-groomed gardens and yards became well-chewed.

By summer some of the neighbors had begun to complain to the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“In summer we get calls every other day from people in urban areas who want us to come and do something about wildlife,” said Madonna Luers, information specialist for the department.

“The same week we got the call about this elk, we had a moose calf out on Trent and Freya and complaints about deer in Greenbluff orchards.

“We also have lots of bears in the far north part of Spokane County, and in the Whitworth area we had coyotes eating house cats.”

Wildlife officers know the public is fickle. Some people want to give the animals some room. Many others want the animals gone.

So it was for the elk on the South Hill.

Alison Cowles, who had observed the elk all winter, admired its adaptation. She was not inclined to alert wildlife officials about the animal.

Other neighbors weren’t so sure.

One called to inform the Department of Fish and Wildlife that the elk had crossed Southeast Boulevard, thereby posing a danger to drivers.

Another neighbor called to complain about the disappearing plants around her house.

Late in July, a team from Fish and Wildlife grabbed their tranquilizer guns and nets and headed out.

One summer evening the dart did its work and the elk was loaded onto a truck and hauled to the back side of Mount Spokane and released.

“She was in good shape and should do fine,” Luers recalled.

A few days later, however, the department received some troubling news.

A small elk calf was seen wandering through the same South Hill neighborhood.

It seems the mother and child had become separated, the mother captured and relocated, the calf left unattended.

“Our officers felt horrible about it,” Luers said. “They went back again and again looking for the calf.”

Some facilities are available for abandoned or injured wildlife and the department hoped it could capture the calf and get it to a safe haven.

They knew if the calf were still living on milk that its chances for survival were slim.

Last weekend 27 volunteers from the Inland Northwest Wildlife Council combed the urban woods, hoping to find the calf.

Again, neighbors were divided.

Some had put out milk in buckets.

But when the volunteers came upon the carcass of the small elk, it had been shot and killed.

“The autopsy suggested somebody blasted it with rock salt,” Luers said.

This is an example of an Inland Northwest paradox.

People come here and like it because this is a wilder-than-average place.

But the elk calf died because, in the long run, people who live in wilder-than-average places want to tame them.

Every day more people desire to find their place in our rural lands outside the city.

It is pastoral and natural out there, until man intrudes.

Then, we need a road.

We need a fence.

We need neighbors.

And the lands we seek for their natural wonders become unnaturally dangerous to the wildlife that lived there first.

, DataTimes MEMO: Chris Peck is the Editor or The Spokesman-Review. His column appears each Sunday on the Perspective page.