Elk numbers dip; are wolves culprits?

Researchers at Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks have proposed a study of elk survival and recruitment in the Bitterroot Valley that could go a long way toward settling the debate over the impact that wolves have on elk. "It sure has applicability toward that," said Craig Jourdonnais, an FWP wildlife biologist in the Bitterroot, who proposed the study after two years of serious declines in the number of elk calves recruited into herds in the East and West Forks of the Bitterroot River. "Elk cow/calf ratios have declined throughout the Bitterroot Valley since 2004," Jourdonnais said. "MFWP recorded a valley-wide historic low in elk calf recruitment in 2009. Steady declines in the West Fork — Hunting District 250 — have left that population 63 percent below objective and recruitment rates of only 11 calves per 100 cows." Jourdonnais said two consecutive years of low calf recruitment — those calves that made it through their first winter and their early vulnerability to predators — prompted a grassroots call for the research. Valley-wide, those late calves have numbered 12 to 15 calves per hundred cows. Ideally they would be at about 35 calves per hundred cows. "There are a lot of opinions about the relationship between elk and wolves and that is all they are," Jourdonnais said. "We want to put some data behind it, but from gut level and our experience in the Gallatin and the Madison, it would not surprise me at all to see wolves are large part of what is going on."...more