Rocky Mt.Nat.Park hunt !

[Tom]

Rocky Mountain Elk!

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For Immediate Release
December 11, 2007

Rocky Mountain National Park to Allow “Qualified Volunteers” to Help Cull Elk Herds
Washington, D.C. – Safari Club International, and other organizations that promote sustainable use wildlife management, have scored a significant victory for wildlife management in the National Park system.

An elk management plan released this week for Rocky Mountain National Park has approved the use of “qualified volunteers” as agents to help park personnel cull excessive elk herds that have plagued the park’s ecosystem. Because the plan specifies that the volunteers will have to be “certified in firearms training, be specially trained in wildlife culling,” and pass a proficiency test, SCI expects that these “qualified volunteers” will come from the hunting community.

This major step in wildlife management marks the first time that the National Park Service has given its blessing to the use of qualified volunteers
as “authorized agents” for culling purposes in a National Park (other than when required to do so by Congress, such as in Grand Teton National Park).

The use of unpaid volunteers should allow the Park Service to save on the new estimated cost of $6.1 million for the culling program over the next 20 years. Additionally, most of the meat from the culled elk will be donated to area food banks and other charities. SCI’s Sportsmen Against Hunger program, active in Colorado and the rest of the United States and around the world, has provided harvested meat to food banks and other charities for 18 years.

SCI has long advocated the use of hunters for NPS wildlife management, has written extensive comments in support of this approach and has lobbied on Capitol Hill in support of bills that would authorize the use of members of the hunting community to cull excessive elk herds on National Parks.

“This is a tremendous step forward,” said SCI President Dennis Anderson. “Hunters have long been at the forefront of wildlife and habitat conservation. Now, as qualified volunteers, members of the hunting community will be able to continue this proud tradition by assisting the Park Service in managing excessive elk herds in Rocky Mountain National Park. With savings of public funds and better assurance that the meat will be properly utilized, using members of the hunting community is a ‘win-win’ situation.”

The Plan does not call for the use of contraceptives to manage the herds, although it authorizes a study of the effectiveness of a multi-year fertility control agent. Contraceptives have not been demonstrated to be effective at controlling populations of wild, free-ranging elk. Only hunting and culling have proven to be efficient and cost-effective.

Within the next 30 days, the Park Service will make a final decision on the elk management plan, likely adopting a culling program using Park Service personnel and authorized agents, including qualified volunteers from the hunting community.

 

[Oak]

It's unfortunate that they didn't adopt a limited public hunt to control the elk. Might not have been much of a hunt, but the DOW would have gained funds and it would have cost the taxpayers a lot less. I suspected it would go this way...oh well.

 

[Oak]

After reading this opinion piece, I think I've changed my mind on this subject. The author makes some good points. The fact is, thousands of cow elk licenses go unsold every year in CO. We apparently don't need more "opportunity" to hunt cows. And labeling this cull a "hunt" is a stretch. Let the feds deal with the protesters.

Select hunters to thin elk herds right call
By Charlie Meyers

Denver Post Outdoors Editor
Article Last Updated: 12/15/2007 11:14:06 PM MST


News: Rocky Mountain National Park officials announced last week they will use select sharpshooters rather than agents of the Colorado Division of Wildlife to reduce runaway elk herds by as many as 200 animals annually.

Views: Christmas has arrived early. Let us count our blessings.

By largely closing the loophole through which sportsmen might participate in herd thinning, park officials have unwittingly done the state wildlife agency and, by extension, the entire license-buying community, a monumental service.

There's not enough time remaining to do a Twelve Days of Christmas ditty, but let us count the ways:

By removing DOW and the hunting public from the loop, we'll save hundreds of thousands of game cash fund dollars — maybe more — spent for training, personnel time and all the other endless fiscal manifestations of such a broad and open-ended project ranging over 20 years.

The park mentioned a $6 million price tag, but, hey, we're talking federal government here. The term "money pit" comes vividly to mind.

Under guidelines that had begun to evolve, the gain for hunters who might jump through a succession of participatory hoops would be minimal: A highly directed, "canned" execution of a cow elk, with diminishing prospect to even keep most of the meat. No trophy bulls here, just cull cows with someone pointing and telling you when to pull the trigger.

Anyone who could dream a desirable outcome from all this — other than maybe a funky T-shirt — has already been slurping way too much holiday cheer.

A joint federal-state venture under the current proposal only keeps the pot boiling for more conflict and debate, deflecting an increasingly lean DOW from far more important matters. We're talking potential horror show here, one that, like whale blubber, gets bigger the longer you chew on it.

The National Park Service is to be commended for taking action to reduce elk herds that are damaging vegetation over large parts of the park. Such initiative is particularly commendable in face of cockamamie proposals from the carnivore-promotion group, Sinapu, to reintroduce wolves.

An unexpected out-migration of elk the past two years has helped eased the problem, but Vaughn Baker, RMNP supervisor, correctly assesses this as a temporary drift that won't achieve the long-term goal of 1,600 to 2,000 animals.

"We can't assume the downward trend will continue," Baker said last summer when addressing the problem.

The notion to use specially trained and skilled public hunters to achieve this balance was a good one when it first was proposed by former commissioner Rick Enstrom and supported by legislation from Colorado Sen. Wayne Allard and Rep. Mark Udall — in large part in reaction to the initial NPS estimate of a massive expenditure of $18 million to $20 million in tax dollars.

These highly specific legislative measures would have allowed park officials to circumvent federal law that forbids hunting in all national parks.

But all the subsequent twists and turns, not to mention no little rancor, that transpired since make any joint venture a very bad idea, particularly for the state.

"The Division of Wildlife and Colorado Wildlife Commission worked hard to develop a viable alternative to using federal tax dollars to fund this great slaughter and the wasting of carcasses," commission chairman Tom Burke said Thursday.

Burke and his constituents instead should give a little holiday prayer of thanks to the feds for taking us out of this endless loop and on to better things. Rocky Mountain National Park officials developed this elk problem. Now let them solve it.

Charlie Meyers: 303-954-1609 or [email protected]