A6
THE ASTORIAN • SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2021
Biologists research how climate change may impact elk
Potential harm to
reproduction
By DICK MASON
The Observer
STARKEY — Rocky
Mountain elk in n ortheast-
ern Oregon may fall prey to
climate change.
U.S. Forest Service
research biologist Mike
Wisdom and Casey Brown,
a research biologist with the
Oregon Department of Fish
and Wildlife, are among a
growing number of people
who are concerned about the
role climate change is play-
ing in nature.
Wisdom and Brown are
helping conduct a Starkey
Project study aimed at deter-
mining if climate change
will hurt Rocky Mountain
elk reproduction.
The study is not complete
and intensive data analysis
remains to be done, but pre-
liminary fi ndings indicate
that climate change could
cause elk populations to
decline in n ortheastern Ore-
gon and other areas.
“We are defi nitely con-
cerned,” Wisdom said.
The reason for the worry
is that rising tempera-
tures resulting from climate
change are reducing the
amount of time quality veg-
etation is available to elk.
“The nutrition win-
dow for elk is shifting,”
Wisdom said. “It is more
compressed.”
Fat reserves
Wisdom said cow elk
now have less time in the
spring and early summer to
build up fat reserves, which
are critical for having suc-
cessful pregnancies and pro-
ducing the milk needed to
raise their calves.
“Lactating females have
higher energy demands and
thus are more sensitive to
climate change,” he said.
Brown said that in the
past the most nutritious
vegetation available to elk,
grasses and forbs fl ush with
new growth, were available
in n ortheastern Oregon from
early spring to early sum-
mer. This vegetation is now
available on a less nutri-
tious — but still valuable
level — from early summer
to mid summer, followed by
a brown period when there
is little precipitation, from
mid-July through the fall, a
time when most of the veg-
etation available is dried out
and off ers little nutritional
value.
Today, the best forage for
elk is available for about two
fewer weeks than before,
and the brown periods run
three to four weeks longer.
“There is now a more
pronounced period of low
precipitation during the
summer and fall,” said Wis-
dom, co-project leader of the
Starkey Project with Darren
Clark of the Department of
Fish and Wildlife.
Brown anticipated, when
she and research biologist
Groundbreaking
work
Jim Ward
A female elk licks a calf.
Priscilla Coe started their
plant study at Starkey in
2015, that they would fi nd
less forage was available to
elk than three decades ago.
But she was surprised by
how much it had decreased.
“It was greater than I
thought it would be,” she
said.
Rising temperatures are
impacting vegetation growth
for a number of reasons,
Brown said. Snowpacks in
mountains are melting ear-
lier and faster each winter
and early spring. Previously,
snowpacks would melt
slowly, allowing rivers and
streams to maintain strong
fl ows longer.
“Winter
snowpacks
before provided a steady,
slow delivery of water to the
region during the spring and
summer,” Wisdom said.
Slow melts of winter
snow meant that moisture
needed for the growth of
grasses and forbs was avail-
able longer, giving cow elk
more time to consume them
and develop fat reserves
needed for successful preg-
nancies and lactation.
Another climate change
factor that may be hurting
elk is that much more of the
precipitation the region is
receiving is now in the form
of rain rather than snow. The
change is hurting elk because
rain runs off faster from the
region in streams and rivers,
unlike snowpacks, which
slowly disperse moisture as
they melt.
“Replacing snow with
rain is not good for elk,”
Wisdom said.
Biologists understand how
changing weather patterns
impact the growth of grasses
and forbs because of exten-
sive studies conducted at the
Starkey Project site in the
1990s by Coe and research
biologist Bruce Johnson,
now both retired. The biolo-
gists measured plant growth
at plots there throughout the
year and determined how
changes in temperature and
precipitation in the region
impacted it.
Wisdom admires how for-
ward thinking Coe and John-
son were when they did their
study in the 1990s.
“It took a lot of foresight,”
he said. “This was before cli-
mate change was a major
issue.”
The plant study con-
ducted in the 1990s by Coe
and Johnson was followed by
Brown and Coe’s study from
2015 to 2019. Brown and
Coe measured plant growth
at the same plots used in the
1990s study.
The Starkey Project, based
at a 25,000-acre fenced facil-
ity, is a joint wildlife research
project conducted by the
Department of Fish and Wild-
life and the Forest Service at
the Starkey Experimental
Forest and Range, 28 miles
southwest of La Grande.
The project is designed
to measure the population
response of deer and elk to
the intensively managed for-
ests and rangelands of the
future. Research at the Star-
key Project began in 1989.
Research done at the Star-
key Project is one reason sci-
entists understand how criti-
cal it is for cow elk to develop
fat reserves needed for suc-
cessful pregnancies and to
raise their young. The Star-
key Project site is one of the
places that body fat levels
of cow elk were measured
during a breakthrough study
by John and Rachel Cook,
a husband and wife team of
biologists who were working
for the National Council for
Air and Stream Improvement.
The Cooks compared lev-
els of body fat in cow elk to
their pregnancy rates and
their lactation levels. They
did this with elk that were
easy to handle because they
were comfortable around
humans after being raised at
the Starkey Project site by the
Cooks.
“They did groundbreaking
work,” Wisdom said.
Mountains of animal,
plant and atmospheric data
have been collected at the
Starkey Project site the past
three decades. It includes
temperature statistics indi-
cating that in the past three
decades the average monthly
temperatures have risen 2-1/2
to 3 degrees. Such tempera-
ture jumps are concrete and
disturbing evidence of a
changing world, Wisdom
said.
“Climate change has
already occurred,” he said.
“It is not hypothetical.”
Elk: Key is to remain fl exible and in close touch with one another
Continued from Page A1
The declaration of coop-
eration that the Clatsop
Plains Elk Collaborative
signed Wednesday is the
result of a multi year eff ort to
get on the same page.
The document lists a
number of strategies and
commitments to address
the elk. The recommenda-
tions include increased edu-
cational outreach to visitors
and residents about living
with elk and how to avoid
interactions with the wild
animals, the possibility of
opening elk hunts in new
areas, changes to local rules
and policies, land use ques-
tions, fencing, enhanced
wildlife corridors and an
elk festival in Warrenton,
among others.
T he elk festival would be
one of the easiest things to
accomplish right away, War-
renton Mayor Henry Balen-
sifer said. But communities
are unlikely to see an imme-
diate change in how offi cials
address elk-related safety
and nuisance concerns. The
process of vetting, research-
ing and implementing the
strategies and proposals
could take several years .
Oregon Solutions
Gov. Kate Brown desig-
nated the e lk c ollaborative
as an Oregon Solutions p roj-
ect in 2019, an important
tag that boosted the priority
of the work and opened the
door to state funding. The
toolkit the group developed
will help others in Oregon
who face similar wildlife
confl icts, the governor wrote
in a letter of appreciation to
the members Wednesday.
“This feels like the end,
but it is really the begin-
ning of very hard work,”
Johnson, D-Scappoose, said
in her own remarks to the
group.
Each stakeholder has
agreed to their own list
of recommendations and
actions, but the goal is to
continue to work together.
Certain initiatives will
require a high degree of con-
tinued cooperation , commu-
nity engagement and some
outside funding, stakehold-
ers said.
Culling — always a
controversial proposal —
remains on the table, but will
take some time to implement
and requires more data and
community outreach. War-
renton plans to pursue hunt-
ing as an option to control
urban herds, however.
Balensifer
anticipates
some trepidation about wild-
life management in city lim-
its, but exactly how the city
will proceed with such man-
agement involves questions
that have not been answered
yet, he said.
Any culling activities
will occur outside city lim-
its fi rst.
“I do think as we learn
from that, that will inform
practices closer and inside,”
Balensifer said.
He expects the C ity C om-
mission will tackle other
issues fi rst, though, such as
reexamining Warrenton’s
wildlife feeding ordinance
and how it is being enforced.
Gearhart City Adminis-
trator Chad Sweet expects
some of the recommenda-
tions city leaders agreed
to will begin to appear on
meeting agendas in the near
future.
There are some items
the city can begin to tackle
sooner rather than later, he
said. Things like reviewing
sections of the city code that
deal with fences, provid-
ing information about types
of landscapes that deter elk
from an area rather than
entice them, or installing
more educational signs .
Data
Then there are other pro-
posals that will require more
research and a more nuanced
understanding of herd move-
ments. In many cases, this
data is still being collected
and analyzed. In some areas,
it has not been collected at
all.
This winter, staff at Lewis
and Clark National Historical
Park plan to analyze various
data tied to elk movement in
and around the park.
For around a dozen years,
park rangers and volunteers
have tracked herd move-
ments through elk pellet
monitoring and driving sur-
veys. Beginning in 2020,
rangers worked with state
wildlife experts to fi t six elk
across three diff erent herds
with radio collars.
While they have man-
aged to get collars on elk in
two diff erent herds that range
around Camp Rilea and the
Astoria Regional A irport ,
they were not able to col-
lar elk in a herd that travels
into the park from the south.
These elk have proven more
elusive, said Carla Cole,
chief of resources at the park .
The fi nal two collars
instead went to elk that wan-
der the coast between Sunset
Beach and Gearhart.
After the combined pel-
let, driving survey and radio
collar data is analyzed, Cole
hopes to have more concrete
information about elk move-
ment by early 2022.
Members of the elk col-
laborative do not expect to
fi nd a one-size-fi ts-all solu-
tion to the issues connected
to the elk herds. The key is to
remain fl exible and in close
touch with one another, they
said.
Vanessa Blackstone, a
wildlife ecologist and mem-
ber of the elk collaborative
who previously worked for
the state, cautioned the group
on Wednesday, “As we fi nd
solutions that fail, remain
open-minded to fi nd the ones
that will succeed.”
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