Washington Fish and Wildlife to study Blue Mountain elk herd

The Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife is taking a deeper look at the Blue Mountain elk herd and what may be causing it to fall short of population objectives.

Starting this week, the agency and contractors will attempt to capture and place tracking collars on 100 cow elk in game management units 162, 166 and 175 that cover parts of Asotin, Garfield, Columbia and Walla Walla counties.

Biologists and researchers will then follow the elk over the next two years. They want to learn how elk are using the landscape and available forage, how they respond to environmental variables like drought and severe weather, what sort of physical condition they are in, if they produce calves, if their calves survive and ultimately if they survive.

When cows die, they will respond quickly to determine the cause. The goal is to learn more about the various and perhaps confounding factors that influence elk survival in the wrinkle of mountains and canyons that occupy the state’s southeastern corner.

“It’s a really challenging project to pull all of it together but it’s something you also have to do to understand what is truly impacting the population,” said Melia DeVivo, an ungulate researcher for the agency.

The herd has hovered just under 4,000 elk, well below the department’s objective of 5,500 animals, for several years. The objective takes tolerance of crop damage into account and is set below what managers believe the habitat can support – sometimes called carrying capacity.

In 2022, the agency embarked on a three-year assessment of elk calf survival. The first year produced alarming results. Just 13% of newborn calves they collared and tracked survived their first year. Most of the calves were killed by predators, with mountain lions accounting for the largest share.

The results were not a surprise to many locals concerned about elk herds. They had long believed thinning mountain lion numbers would reverse elk declines. A group of commissioners from Asotin, Columbia and Garfield counties pressured the department to liberalize cougar seasons.

Then the second and third years of the study produced much different results. Elk calf survival climbed to 47.5% in 2023 and 52.5% in 2024. Across all three years, 36.8% of collared calves survived – a rate high enough to promote stability and even modest growth.

But annual elk herd surveys continued to reveal troubling demographics, such as low cow-to-calf ratios, that don’t align with stability and growth.

“What that tells us is there is something else going on,” DeVivo said. “Some other key component in the population being affected.”

The politicians representing the Blue Mountain region believe the agency should prioritize action over research. Justin Dixon, a member of the Garfield County Commission, said the agency should concentrate on predators before spending time and money on more studies. He noted predation is a major cause of mortality for elk calves.

“If we are not going to address the major concerns already pointed out in a study done by Fish and Game, why are we going to do a study on things you cannot change like climate, nutrients and weather patterns?” he said. “There is a predator problem. They have admitted that.”

Dixon noted that the cougar hunting season is closed in much of the Blue Mountains after quotas that many hunters view as too conservative were met.

“You are taking predator management out of the control of lawful hunting,” he said. “They closed cougar hunting very early.”

People recreating in the Blues during the capture and collar operation may see helicopters flying close to the ground. DeVivo said capturing elk does come with risks to the animals.

“We don’t take it lightly,” DeVivo said. “There is a lot of training, a lot of expertise with capture and handling. We do a lot of mitigation of making sure we are safely handling them, making sure we are not running them around with the helicopter too long. We monitor temperature, respiration, heart rate while processing them and try to work as quickly as possible so that animal can rejoin the herd.”