Helena, Montana - The winter elk hunt in
Gardiner will be cut from 1,180 hunters to 148 hunters,
mirroring the steady downward spiral of the Northern
Yellowstone elk herd, the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks
Commission decided here Thursday.
The hunt is likely to be discontinued altogether in the future,
said Kurt Alt, FWP regional wildlife manager. "It's probably
going to go away," he said.
He cited the heavy density of wolves in and near the park,
coupled with other predation, as a reason for cutting the hunt
by more than 90 percent by January 2006.
The northern Yellowstone herd hit a peak of about 19,000 animals in
1994.
The next year, wolves were reintroduced and elk
have been on a steady decline ever since.
"It's just one more mouth to
feed," Alt said of the wolves.
As recently as 2000, FWP offered more than 2,800 tags for the late
hunt, which aimed to harvest mostly female elk that migrated out of
Yellowstone National Park.
"We expect to observe less than 8,000 elk during this December's
count," Alt said. "Wolf lovers will have a hard time
accepting that wolves are having such an impact."
He noted that in 1968, when the National Park Service stopped culling
elk inside the park, there were about 4,000 elk there.
By 1975, the year the late hunt commenced, the number had climbed
to 12,000.
In those years, there were no wolves, about half as many
grizzly bears as there are today, and a lot fewer lions, Alt
noted.
He said that, with the abundance of predators in and near the park, he
fears that "one bad winter" could drop the elk herd to the
1968 level and the smaller herd would then face all those predators.
Critics of wolf reintroduction have pointed to reduced elk
numbers for years and blamed wolves for them.
Now it turns out they're right, at least partly.
Recent studies in Yellowstone have shown that 70 percent of
elk calves die from predators by the end of September of their first
year.
Bears, both black and grizzly, account for about 60 percent of the
calves that die in the first few weeks of their lives in the jaws of
predators. After the calves become more mobile, wolves begin killing
more of them and bears kill fewer, the studies show.
Springtime counts over the last three years have shown that 12-14
calves per 100 cows have remained alive through the first year of
their life.
A calf/cow ratio of about 20 is needed for a herd to sustain itself,
Alt told the commission.
FWP commission chairman Dan Walker asked him if he expected to see
that level reached within the next 10 years. Alt said "no."
The commission also approved Montana's statewide elk plan, which
focuses on ways for people to harvest more elk, if necessary. Unlike
the area just north of the park, most elk hunting districts in the
state contain more elk than guidelines call for, leading to landowner
complaints.
It's possible that some districts could be limited to antlerless elk
only, in efforts to reduce populations.
Alt said he is not concerned about
wolves causing similar big drops in elk numbers in other parts of the
state.
It hasn't happened in northwest Montana, he said, or along the Rocky
Mountain Front, where wolves have lived for years.
Wolves will continue to spread out from the park, but a
significant number will get in trouble with livestock
and likely will be killed, Alt said.
"Whether they are listed (by the Endangered Species Act) or not,
wolves will be managed on landscapes where people live and work,"
he said.
FWP is taking over many wolf management duties from the federal
government (USFWS).
Once delisted -- a step that could be years away -- Montana hopes to
install limited hunting and trapping seasons for wolves, he said.
Copyright 2004, Bozeman Daily Chronicle.
http://bozemandailychronicle.com/articles/2004/12/17/news/02latehunt.txt