Monday, May 09, 2011

So many elk eating, trampling grass on Zumwalt Prairie that hazers hired to run them off

...They've become masters of the fine art of being a nuisance to elk. Preferring not to injure the animals or trigger panicky stampedes through ranchers' fences, they walk or sometimes ride four-wheelers a half-mile behind the herds to move them slowly. The Zumwalt Prairie, north of Joseph and Enterprise, is one of the continent's largest remaining intact bunchgrass savannas. It's about 95 percent privately owned. The Nature Conservancy, an international nonprofit that buys land for environmental preservation, has a 33,000-acre preserve in the Zumwalt and the adjoining canyon country to the east. Rocky Mountain elk began showing up on the Zumwalt in the 1970s after being introduced into eastern Oregon's Blue Mountains in the 1930s. Records suggest they were rare to non-existent in the region during the frontier era. But now the vast grassland sometimes resembles an overcrowded African veldt. The elk population on the Zumwalt Prairie has exploded from 500 a decade ago to 3,400 animals this year. "The elk move into those pastures 1,000 in a herd and wipe it out," said Enterprise-area cattleman Tom Birkmaier, one of 22 ranching families that own land on the Zumwalt...more

Several reasons are given for the huge increase of elk on the prairie, one of which is:
The cougar population has grown in the nearby forests and canyons, due in large part to a 1994 state ballot measure banning hunting the big cats with hounds. Cougars don't like open prairie as much as timber -- so the elk head to the Zumwalt, wildlife officials say.
Another reason is given by a university official:
A third explanation is that elk no longer prefer the nearby river canyons as they once did because fewer domestic sheep and cattle graze there, said Oregon State University Extension agent John Williams  of Enterprise. Elk like the lush new grasses that spring up after cattle and sheep pass through, but regulators reduced domestic livestock in the river canyons, so the elk have found new ground, he said.
Ban hunting, ban grazing, and destroy a preserve. Way to go fellas.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I guess the geniuses have never heard of overstocking? Blame it on everything else except stupidity and
government kowtowing to green moonbats.