Nov 09, 2008 - 04:05:21 CST
THEODORE ROOSEVELT NATIONAL PARK - Even as the National Park Service works toward a lethal solution, the number of elk in the South Unit of Theodore Roosevelt National Park tripped over the 1,000 mark this year.That's more than have ever had to "make a living" there, as wildlife biologists like to describe it.
After more than five years of study, the National Park Service says it is finally within weeks of releasing a draft Environmental Impact Statement on how it will reduce the number of elk that far exceed an ideal population of about 360.
Park superintendent Valerie Naylor said the document will be released in mid-December and the public will have three months to think about the alternatives and comment before it goes back for final review and decision.
The park has to do something.
It can no longer keep numbers down by rounding them up and shipping elk to other management sites because of the threat of chronic wasting disease.
While a very healthy herd keeps growing, the park has used the time to develop options and look at the effect on the park's vegetation, which is its primary management responsibility, Naylor said.
The elk are not the only ungulates (mammals with hoofs) grazing the park's 46,000 acres.
They share quarters with 275 bison, 150 wild horses and robust numbers of white-tail and mule deer and other wildlife species.
The 1,500 or so elk, bison and horses are the park's only managed species.
Their number, compared to federal grazing allocations on the other side of the park fence, is at the highest density - about two and a half acres per animal unit - allowed on the best forage base out there and then only for about six months, as opposed to year-round in the park.
"That would be on the best situation that we have, pristine crested wheat grass and a pristine native stand," said Ryan Pitts, a range supervisor for the U.S Forest Service's Medora District, which has about 450,000 acres in grazing permits on the Little Missouri Grasslands around the park. "It better be pretty good."
Other than broadly demonstrating allowable grazing animals per acre, Pitts said comparing cow-calf grazing permits to wildlife grazing in a national park is comparing apples to oranges.
Theodore Roosevelt National Park wildlife biologist Mike Oehler said the same.
"It isn't the angus in the back pasture," he said.
Oehler assembled a science team of wildlife and range specialists to look at the park's vegetation and those findings will be part of the document, which will set out a elk management plan for the next 15 years.
Based on current conditions, Oehler says the number of elk in the park "is not way beyond the park's ability to feed the animals."
He said the managed animals, elk in particular, are healthy and have good reproduction numbers.
"We really have no reason to think that what we've been doing is wrong," he said.
He acknowledges that some parts of the park get "hammered" pretty hard, but says short term overgrazing can stimulate new plant species.
"A range system doesn't crash in one year, or two years, or three years. Once you get there, it's hard to get back," he said. "Having some areas that are utilized more is not a bad thing, but we don't want the whole park to be overgrazed."
He said the team assessed the park as a system. "We consider the vegetation, not the ungulates themselves. We're not constrained by turning out steaks. We can only look at what we're seeing out there."
Glen Sargeant, a wildlife biologist with the USGS's Northern Plains Research Center in Jamestown, has focused on elk population dynamics and was part of Oehler's science team.
While not a range specialist, Sargeant said the park range is extraordinarily difficult to assess, because of the terrain and plant diversity.
"The impression one gets depends on where one looks," he said.
He said the park manages forage on the conservative side and while there are places that are hard hit, "There are other places where you think, 'Why were we worried?' "
In fact, he said, the elk population could probably be much larger.
"It's one of the healthiest elk populations that's ever been studied. That suggests they're not living close to the margin," he said. "By the time they're in trouble there would be substantial impacts to the range and it's not close."
He based that in part on a federal capture crew that netted 30 elk in the park in 2007 and has looked at thousands of elk all over the west
"They found big, strong vigorous animals, with good reproduction rates; notably so," he said.
But Oehler said it wouldn't make sense to manage even the park's present elk population of 900 before this spring's calving, because reduction down the road would only increase exponentially.
It likely will be another two years before elk reduction begins and it will be staged over two to five years, said Naylor.
By that time, and depending on elk hunting success outside park boundaries, some 1,000 animals will have to be killed, if the park decides to get back to its earlier standard of 360.
The North Dakota Game and Fish Department wants certified hunters to be allowed into the park to kill the animals. The park also has proposed using federal sharpshooters, and killing enough animals for a statistical sampling to test and disprove chronic wasting disease so that some could be transported out, among other possibilities.
Meanwhile, the longer the park takes to get to a decision, the more elk that will have to be eliminated.
Naylor said the park started the process quickly after 2002 when it no longer had the round-up-and-transfer tool available for elk control.
Most EIS documents take a long time, she said.
"The process is very thorough. It has to stand up to the public and legally. Rushing does absolutely no good," she said.
(Reach reporter Lauren Donovan at 888-303-5511 or lauren@westriv.com.)
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