Daily Chronicle - Elk Management Article

[Big Foot]

Montana elk management in the news.

http://www.bozemandailychronicle.co...top&utm_source=block_649307&utm_campaign=blox

Round and round we go.

 

[katqanna]

On Oct. 16th, down here in Bozeman's FWP office on s. 19th, the Commission is meeting. Before the Commission meeting begins they have scheduled a Elk Hunting Season Structure Review at 8:00. Word is the outfitters hope to greatly affect this.

Heres one of the papers that Ken Hamlin referenced and participated in. It basically states that areas that do not allow public hunting, due to the wiley elk seeking habitat security on private lands during hunting season and remaining there, that it is creating a private land herd and the public herd is loosing ground.
Effects of Hunter Access and Habitat Security on Elk Habitat Selection in Landscapes With a Public and Private Land Matrix 2013

If hunting opportunity exists solely or disproportionately on public lands, hunting may selectively reduce numbers in the public land herd segment. If animals learn migratory and movement patterns as calves, over time this could result in the loss of the public land herd segment and limited private land hunts will not be effective in rebuilding the public lands segment of the herd over the short term. To rebuild the public segment of the herd over time, public lands hunting pressure may need to be reduced or eliminated while hunting pressure on private lands is increased, to affect differential mortality rates in different herd segments. Conversely, if elk selection for lands inaccessible to hunters represents a flexible behavioral strategy, elk redistribution onto public lands may be achievable in the short term via elk avoidance of hunters, with only limited hunter access onto lands that currently are not open to hunting

This last fall, during the Watershed elk brucellosis working group meetings which I attended, I pointed out that of all those ranchers complaining about the elk and wanting the extended kill permits, "dispersal hunts", etc with no public hunter access requirements, that none of those ranchers participated in Block Management either. Many of them outfit their own properties or lease to outfitters.

Region 3 Block Management Map shows the HWY 89 area south from Livingston to Gardiner. Please note that there is only one Block Management participant near Livingston, who was not one of the ranchers complaining about the elk and brucellosis. Not one of the Park County ranchers from the UYWB working group participates in Block Management. Block Management allows public hunter access, which could help move elk, due to hunting pressure, off of the private lands where cattle conflict could occur.

Here is the Outfitters Leasing Private Lands map (blow up to show area of Livingston HWY 89 south to Gardiner) littered with participants.

Now private land owners have the right to do as they like on their property, to allow or not allow public hunting, but down here in Region 3, where the brucellosis Designated Surveillance Area occurs, there is a major hypocrisy occuring of landowners not participating much in Game Damage that required public hunting access for FWP actions, and this brucellosis management plan that requires none, with ranchers now claiming elk brucellosis threats, wanting extra kill permits, elk management removal hunts (dispersal hunts).

During the January 2014 brucellosis wg mtg, the Durgans (Jim Durgan is also a Park County Commissioner and stated in the mtg that you should be able to shoot elk any time of the year) and Karen Loveless were discussing extended elk hunting opportunities they wanted to implement in that Hunt District. In the audio at 1:48:20 – FWP Karen Loveless was asked by the Durgans to explain about the new hunting proposals for Paradise Valley, in certain areas concerned with brucellosis commingling risk, they will have a more liberal season, extend the HD 317 B licenses in the north end of 313, on private land only. This in an area that was not over object and has been in a decade long decline. Dont get me started on the bs fake winter count this year that was modeled to say that all the sudden the populations were stable in this area.

At the July Statewide Elk Brucellosis Working Group mtg, which involves a number of ranchers from various counties, including the Madison, that ranchers wanted elk removed, kept complaining about numbers, not the reality of brucellosis and the cattle to cattle transmissions in Park County which were part of the discussion at the beginning of the meeting. It was just elk numbers and they are eating our grass. As a group, I confronted them with the fact that FWP Helena states that they reason they did not recommend required Public Hunter access as in Game Damage was because this group did not recommend it, to please rectify the situation by adding it, only a few of the members agreed (the sportsmen and Ken Hamlin). The Ag/rancher interest did not and it remained void of public hunter access requirements.

Sorry for the wall but there is a lot of politics, not scientific wildlife management, driving the elk hunting issue, especially down here.