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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, MARcH 1, 2019
Elk: Driving surveys provide less concrete data than elk pellet surveys
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methods to track elk herd numbers
and movements: driving surveys,
done at sunrise every other month
throughout the year on public roads
around the park’s borders, and elk
fecal pellet surveys, done on foot
in park property by staff and vol-
unteers willing to poke at poop and
bushwhack through dense forest.
The driving surveys provide far
less concrete data than the elk pel-
let surveys, but they are a low-ef-
fort way to gather a little more
information. Park staff can say
with confidence where they have
seen — at least from the road —
a lot of elk over the years, where
they have seen only a few and
where both sightings and abun-
dance seem to be changing.
The national park’s tracking
work is, in part, an effort to untan-
gle anecdotal information and pin
it to data. Because, as Cole said,
“Everyone’s memory is faulty.”
The journals of the explorers
Meriwether Lewis and William
Clark provide a glimpse at what
elk abundance around the mod-
ern-day national park looked like
before European settlement. But
since then, Warrenton has under-
gone rapid large-scale develop-
ment in areas that were historically
forests and fields.
Many of the conversations Cole
hears now about elk in the area —
and what constitutes normal herd
sizes or travel patterns — seems
to be set in a shorter, more recent
time frame.
“What people are remember-
ing is from their own lifetimes and
that’s not necessarily the best indi-
cation of what ‘normal’ is,” she
said. “There could be pretty wide
fluctuations in both herd size and
abundance and distribution and
pattens of use across the landscape.
Those are the questions we’re
really just trying to get more infor-
mation on.”
Park staff are in the process of
refining the most recent years of
driving and pellet survey data, and
are interested to see what trends
emerge when this data is contextu-
alized within 10 years of informa-
tion. A plan to fit up to six elk in
the park with radio collars this year
could reveal even more detailed
information about how the animals
use the park.
Colin Murphey/The Daily Astorian
A herd of elk rests in a field near Warrenton.
For now, Cole and Bird will
keep driving.
‘Reasonably predictable’
Clatsop County’s herds are
folded into a large group known
as the Saddle Mountain unit. The
Oregon Department of Fish and
Wildlife manages many of the
populations in the unit for hunting,
keeping an eye on the ratio of bulls
to cows and calves to cows.
Though biologists use helicop-
ters — and have experimented
with drones — to survey herds in
some parts of the unit, driving is
really the only way to survey the
Clatsop Plains elk. These herds
inhabit a mix of forested, agricul-
tural and increasingly developed
and urban lands crossed with pub-
lic roads and divided by a busy
highway.
“Most herds don’t freak out if
you fly over them, but if they do,
they run through fences or essen-
tially stampede,” said Herman Bie-
derbeck, district wildlife biologist.
“And that’s the last thing we want
to do in that area.”
Like the national park’s driv-
ing survey crews, state trackers are
limited by what they can see from
the road and in open areas. Then,
of course, there is what they hear
from people who live in Gearhart
and Warrenton who deal with the
Clatsop Plains elk regularly.
“We get reports of the size of the
Gearhart elk herd and some people
who don’t like the elk all that much
have a tendency to give inflated
numbers,” Biederbeck said.
He often relies on meticulous
observers, like former biology
teacher and nature photographer
Neal Maine, to ground-truth the
claims.
While there is pressure on local
city leaders to address the elk
herds, it does not affect Maine.
After 30 years of teaching biology,
he’s more interested in looking at
all the variables and letting people
decide for themselves.
For years, he’s kept an eye on
the Gearhart elk and his efforts to
track them fall somewhere in the
middle between official and unof-
ficial. He knows the herds’ usual
routes, and believes the commu-
nity could find ways to better pre-
dict when elk will pop up at places
like the golf course and use this
knowledge to plan ahead.
“They have patterns — they
break the pattern all the time —
but it’s reasonably predictable,” he
said.
Warrenton and Gearhart are
working with Oregon Solutions,
a group based out of Portland
State University’s National Pol-
icy Consensus Center, on how to
best address the Clatsop Plains elk
herds. Leaders are hoping for an
official project designation for the
work from Gov. Kate Brown.
Gearhart Mayor Matt Brown
has indicated one of his primary
concerns is public safety. To
Maine, that’s something concrete
that could be defined and addressed
in a variety of ways right now —
beyond the weathered temporary
signs tacked to notice boards and
posts around the dunes in Gear-
hart that warn people to stay away
from elk during the rutting season
or when calves are present.
The Clatsop County Elk sight-
ings! Facebook group Weil started
in 2014 boasts more than 500
members, a number that has sky-
rocketed suddenly several times
over the years. The spikes appear
to coincide with public discussions
or media reports about local elk
herds, Weil says.
Sometimes this fascination with
elk leads to problems. Over the
years, Maine has seen people sic
their dogs on elk, or try to get self-
ies with them.
But elk are responding to spe-
cific things in their environment,
solving problems, going to where
there’s food and reacting when they
feel threatened, Maine said. After
years of observing both human
and elk behavior, he believes
the ones most able to change
things in this equation are the
humans.
“We can’t fix them,” he said of
the elk. “But we can adjust.”
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