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Park elk in hunt sights

Game and Fish, Teton park, elk refuge debate how, whether to change hunt strategies.

By Rebecca Huntington

Wyoming Game and Fish officials say a plan to reduce elk numbers in Grand Teton National Park is flawed because of park restrictions on where hunters can kill the animals.

But park officials disagree, saying the best way to reduce park elk numbers is to change how elk are hunted or harassed on the National Elk Refuge, where the elk winter.

The National Park Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are proposing reducing the number of elk summering in Teton park to between 1,300 and 1,600, down from an estimated 2,500 animals. The two federal agencies say trimming park elk numbers could help limit the refuge elk population. Federal officials want to whittle the number of elk wintering on the refuge to reduce the need for artificially feeding the animals ­ a practice that promotes the spread of diseases.

Game and Fish officials indicated Monday they could support a goal to reduce elk numbers in Teton park to help achieve the state's population goal of 11,029 animals in the Jackson herd. Game and Fish Wildlife Division Assistant Chief John Emmerich said the Jackson herd is currently about 1,500 animals over objective.

But Emmerich told the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission in a telephone conference call Monday that hunters would need greater access in Teton park to make that reduction.

"We cannot achieve that goal with the current tools available," Emmerich said during the conference call.

Moreover, the draft elk and bison plan proposed by Fish and Wildlife and the Park Service puts too much emphasis on "natural regulation" to get the job done, he said.

But Steve Cain, Teton park senior biologist, disagreed. Park and refuge officials are proposing new tools and not relying on natural regulation alone, Cain said. He questioned the proposals for greater hunting access in the park, saying those ideas have either been tried before or would target the wrong herd segments.

"We've looked at this situation for many years and have all agreed that the best tool we can put in place is something to deal with those elk on the south end of the refuge," Cain said Tuesday.

So refuge and park officials are proposing increasing public access to the south end of the refuge ­ an area traditionally off limits to people. The federal agencies' preferred alternative in a draft plan, now available for public comment, proposes allowing either public recreation or an early hunt on the southern end of the refuge.

Historically, hunting has been off limits in the area due to its proximity to the town of Jackson. Both federal and state wildlife managers said if a hunt were proposed for the southern end of the refuge, restrictions would be put in place to ensure public safety.

Emmerich said Game and Fish supports opening the southern end of the refuge to a hunt. But that change does not go far enough, he said. Creating more access in Teton park, in addition to the refuge, would leave fewer safe zones for elk overall and give hunters a better shot at an elk, he said.

"We feel that we need all those opportunities," Emmerich said.

Cain disagreed that opening up access in the park, as proposed in Game and Fish comments approved Monday, would be the most effective way to meet elk population goals.

Harvest potential questioned

For example, Game and Fish proposes opening three new park areas to elk hunting to help meet long-term population objectives. One is Hunt Area 72, known as Berry Creek, in northern Teton park west of Jackson Lake. The second is the Kelly Hill area above Kelly Warm Springs bordered by the Gros Ventre River, the road to Teton Science Schools, the park's east boundary and the Kelly Hayfields. The third is west of Highway 89/191 and east of the Snake River between Spread Creek and the Buffalo Fork.

Biologist Mark Boyce described Hunt Area 72 as "perhaps the highest quality hunt" in Teton park in his 1989 book, The Jackson Elk Herd. It covers the drainages of Berry, Owl and Web Canyon creeks north to the park border. But Boyce wrote that the area had been closed to hunters because park officials did not feel that the few elk harvested in the area justified creating sport-hunting impacts in a wilderness-quality area.

When opened to hunting during eight seasons from 1950 to 1967, an average of 15 elk were killed annually, according to Boyce, who found that 36 percent of elk killed were taken by Game and Fish employees or other members of their hunting party. The roadless area is notoriously tough to access.

"Given the insignificant harvests from the Berry Creek area, it seems impossible to justify conducting a herd reduction program there," Boyce wrote.

Emmerich said he could not respond to specifics about Hunt Area 72 and referred questions to Jackson Game and Fish biologist Doug Brimeyer and Game Warden Bill Long. Brimeyer and Long could not be reached Tuesday afternoon for comment.

Emmerich did stress his agency's overall desire to allow as much hunting access as possible in the park.

Cain, meanwhile, also questioned the benefits of opening the Kelly Hill area and the river bottoms north of Spread Creek to hunting.

The Park Service, in cooperation with Game and Fish, opened the river bottoms between Spread Creek and Buffalo Fork to hunting about a decade ago, Cain said. But wildlife managers found that after being shot at on the first few days of hunting season, elk left the area and did not return. Cain speculated that elk did not remain in the area because of a lack of cover.

"We had very, very few elk harvested," he said.

As for the Kelly Hill area, Cain said it is one of the few good winter ranges in the park. Elk, bison and bighorn sheep winter there, he said. Park officials are concerned that hunting would deter animals from remaining on the winter range, he said.

Cain also questioned the potential benefits of improving hunter access at Bailey, Arizona, Pilgrim and Pacific creeks. In the Game and Fish comments, state officials say hunting access to the Bridger-Teton National Forest has deteriorated due to a lack of improvements at park trailheads, which lead to the forest.

Cain agreed hunter access could be improved at those trailheads. But encouraging more hunting in those areas would target Teton Wilderness elk more than park elk, he said.

Biologists want balance in reductions

The Jackson elk herd includes four segments that summer in different locations: Teton park, southern Yellowstone National Park, the Teton Wilderness and the Gros Ventre Mountains. Those four segments all share limited winter range. Hunters and biologists have long worried that elk in the three other segments, which are more vulnerable to hunting, could be over-hunted while tough-to-access park elk are not hunted. Ideally, biologists try to balance elk numbers across the four segments to ensure summer ranges are not over- or underpopulated.

Bob Wharff of Sportsmen for Fish & Wildlife said hunters are worried they could see hunting opportunities dwindle "if we keep pounding the elk that are accessible." So Sportsmen for Fish & Wildlife only supports managing for the population objective of 11,029 elk if reductions come from the Teton park segment and not from the other segments.

Hunters already are worried about losing hunting opportunities due to increased competition for prey from wolves and other predators, he said. But he also said predators could help control elk numbers in hard-to-hunt areas. "Let's spread the hunting pressure rather than really putting all the pressure on all the elk that are susceptible to hunting," he said.

That's not easy given human development and legal constraints. Legally, hunting is not allowed west of the Snake River within Teton park except for in Area 72; it would take an act of Congress to change that prohibition.

So Teton park elk have learned to migrate to the refuge by staying on the west side of the Snake River. The elk cross the river near the Jackson Hole Airport or move through private subdivisions to the Gros Ventre Junction. From either location, elk can make a nighttime dash to the south end of the refuge and avoid hunters entirely. That's why refuge and park managers want to target the southern end of the refuge to control park elk numbers, Cain said.

Park elk also are often the first elk to show up on the southern end of the refuge, he said. Allowing public recreation or a limited, perhaps guided, hunt could be used to displace the elk from that safe zone to areas where the animals could be taken by hunters to get a more sustained harvest on the population segment over time, he said.

Refuge Manager Barry Reiswig said he does not believe major changes are needed to meet population goals. Last winter, the refuge had only 4,900 elk on feed, which is within the proposed goal of wintering between 4,000 and 5,000 elk on the refuge, he said.

Likewise, Cain said the park elk population has been declining, albeit slowly, thanks to hunting seasons set cooperatively by Game and Fish, the Park Service and the refuge. Based on the most accurate surveys available, the park elk herd numbered 2,516 in 2000, down from 3,202 elk counted in 1996, he said. The herd numbers have continued to decline, Cain said, though a precise count is not available. Also, Game and Fish already has the authority to increase the percentage of licenses for cow elk, the reproductive segment of the herd, to bring the population down even more, he said.

As for Emmerich, he said, "We feel we're doing everything we can. [And] we need to have all the opportunities available to us if we're going to really achieve this goal of reducing the population anywhere from 1,000 to 1,500."