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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • WEDNESDAY, MAY 23, 2018
Officials see need to reduce elk damage in Skagit Valley
A lesson for the
North Coast?
By KIMBERLY CAUVEL
Skagit Valley Herald
MOUNT
VERNON,
Wash. — Elk are easy to spot
against the green backdrop of
the Skagit Valley, where much
of the resident North Cascades
elk herd that has grown to an
estimated 1,600 is found.
For farmers in the area —
especially those who grow
grass for their cattle or to sell
to other beef or dairy farms
— those elk have become
increasingly problematic.
Some Skagit County land-
owners and officials have
deemed the intrusion of elk on
private property to be illegal.
Hamilton area beef farmer
Randy Good, who is vice pres-
ident of the Skagit County
Cattlemen’s Association, said
the state Department of Fish
and Wildlife is breaking the
law by allowing an increas-
ing elk population to damage
crops and homes.
A state mandate for Fish
and& Wildlife states: “Noth-
ing in this title shall be con-
strued to infringe on the right
of a private property owner
to control the owner’s private
property.”
The Skagit County Board
of Commissioners agrees. In
a February letter to Fish and
Wildlife, the commissioners
asked that the agency com-
ply with the law in question
“immediately by removing elk
off the valley floor … by any
means necessary.”
Fish and Wildlife Deputy
Director Amy Windrope has
publicly recognized the issue.
“We have some statutory
obligations as well as provisio
language that says we need to
address the elk damage issues
in the Skagit Valley,” she said
during a Fish and Wildlife
Commission meeting in April.
Windrope told the Fish and
Wildlife Commission she has
heard from several landown-
ers affected by elk, includ-
ing many during the previ-
Charles Biles/Skagit Valley Herald
Elk graze in the rain in a field near Birdsview east of Sedro-Woolley, Wash.
ous damage year, from July
through March.
“The damage issues are
continuing. We had over 100
complaints this (damage) year,
so we are under a microscope
as well as a lot of pressure to
resolve this issue,” she said.
Some landowners from
along Highway 20 and the
Skagit River spoke to the
commission in April.
“You have a lot of elk up
in the hills that are finding out
there’s better grass, less pred-
ators and it’s kind of a wel-
fare state (in the valley) right
now,” Skagit County Farm
Bureau President Bill Schmidt
said.
Janis Schweitzer, who has
had flowers eaten and land-
scaping trampled by elk, urged
the commission to help.
“Some farmers may be out
of business, which is really
sad, if we don’t do some-
thing,” she said.
A call to cull
Those suffering property
damage and financial losses
due to elk want the number of
animals in the herd reduced.
“There needs to be a cull-
ing,” dairy farmer Derek
Blanken said while discussing
the issue during a rainy day in
March.
Some said they believe
more hunting should be
allowed in the valley and
avoided in the forested hills
enclosing it.
“I would like to see the
agricultural zone between
South Skagit Highway and
Highway 20 have more of an
open season … to try to keep
the numbers down on the agri-
cultural land,” Schmidt said.
“We need a little more coor-
dination between hunting and
farming.”
Cindy Ovenell-Kleinhui-
zen, who runs the Double O
Ranch south of Concrete, said
she believes more hunting
is needed because for young
elk born in the valley, it’s the
only home they’ve known and
where they are likely to stay.
“The only way to fix it is to
eliminate them,” she said.
Eliminating the elk herd,
which the state and treaty
tribes are tasked with manag-
ing and are interested in pre-
serving, is out of the question.
But Fish and Wildlife
regional biologist Fenner Yar-
borough said the state agency
recently adopted new hunt-
ing regulations that were set
in part to reduce property
damage.
The new regulations will
increase the number of elk
from the North Cascades herd
that can be killed in the Skagit
Valley by 32 animals per hunt-
ing season — 16 more for
both nontribal and tribal hunt-
ers — starting this year.
The new regulations will
also add some time for non-
tribal hunting in January, Yar-
borough said. Those changes
are an effort to encourage the
elk into the hills.
“We need them out of the
valley and back into the for-
ests,” Windrope said. “For that
we have different tools in our
toolbox: We have fencing, we
have nonlethal hazing and we
have hunting — and we need
to use them all.”
She said several tribes in
the region, including the Still-
aguamish Tribe of Indians,
were opposed to the hunt-
ing increases, but the state
believes some expansion was
warranted.
“The science supports us
increasing the harvest this
year. I think it’s an important
step,” Windrope said.
Upper Skagit Indian Tribe
Natural Resources Direc-
tor Scott Schuyler said the
tribe, which frequently sees
elk on its reservation east of
Sedro-Woolley, was not one
of those that opposed the new
regulations.
He said the Upper Skagit
tribe agrees that the grow-
ing herd should be able to
support increased hunting
opportunities.
The Stillaguamish, Sauk-
Suiattle and Lummi tribes
feel otherwise, according to
a March letter to Fish and
Wildlife.
“The North Cascades elk
herd has been and contin-
ues to be critically import-
ant to the Point Elliot Treaty
tribes and any effort to reduce
herd growth … is not only a
threat to our culture, tradition,
subsistence and religion, it is
an erosion of our guaranteed
treaty rights,” the letter states.
Windrope said she under-
stands some tribes are con-
cerned about slowing prog-
ress to restore the herd, but
the effort to push elk out of the
valley will benefit everyone.
“It doesn’t do any of us
any good to have the elk in the
valley on agricultural lands,
where the tribes can’t hunt
them and we can’t hunt them,”
she said.
Indiscriminate
destruction
Perhaps the greatest chal-
lenge with the growing elk
herd is that the animals will
eat just about anything.
From apple and cherry
trees to towering Douglas firs,
nearly every tree on Schmidt’s
property bears scars from
hungry elk. He said they’ve
eaten apples off trees, bro-
ken branches off cedars and
rubbed bark off maples.
They will gnaw at the
bark of various types of trees,
sometimes killing young trees
and destroying investments,
Schmidt said as he pointed to
a young Douglas fir eaten by
elk about 30 years before it
would have been large enough
to harvest.
Larger trees can also be
destroyed or lose value.
As elk teeth tear into a
tree’s bark, they create an
entrance for beetles and fun-
gus, Schmidt said.
He said he’s had to cut
down some trees that were
weakened at the bases and
carve away rotten sections of
others that could have been
valuable wood.
Potted flowers also attract
elk.
Schweitzer said she spent
an afternoon chasing elk out
of Forest Park Cemetery west
of Concrete after finding elk
eating blooms out of pots she
placed at the graves of her
mother and her husband.
Schmidt said he has seen
up to 105 elk at a time on his
land near Concrete. That’s a
lot of animals trampling and
chomping their way through
2.5 acres meant to support him
through timber sales.
It’s not uncommon to see
dozens of elk in one field.
Ovenell-Kleinhuizen said
elk have eaten so much grass
out of her fields and hay from
her bales that in 2013 she had
to purchase feed from else-
where for the first time since
the family ranch was estab-
lished in the 1940s.
Since 2013, she said she
has spent $37,305 on feed.
Several landowners said
it’s difficult to calculate
exactly how much the damage
caused by elk has cost them.
When elk graze in a grass
field, for example, the impact
can be felt for years.
“Every year they graze it
down too much, so the next
year it comes back slower
and it comes back less,”
Ovenell-Kleinhuizen
said.
“It’s hard to put a dollar
amount on that.”
She and other landown-
ers said the $192,810 Fish and
Wildlife has paid to area farm-
ers since 2002 for elk dam-
age is a fraction of the cost to
those affected.
“It’s pittance compared
to everybody’s damages,”
Schmidt said.
That issue was discussed at
the annual east county forum
Skagit County officials held in
Concrete.
The Skagit County com-
missioners agree that the costs
of elk damage need to be
addressed.
“The increasing number of
elk on the valley floor … have
negative economic impacts
far beyond the minimal reim-
bursements available,” they
said in their letter to Fish and
Wildlife.
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