Sunday, June 07, 2009
DGIF studies issues surrounding elk
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
Recent columns
While making their pitch over the past several months, bear hunters who supported a proposed bear-only license noted that the license had potential to give the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries a nice financial boost.
But while the bear license bid failed at Tuesday's DGIF board meeting, the same meeting produced news of continued progress on an initiative that might hold some future financial promise for both the agency and an economically challenged section of the state.
After the pressing business of approving hunting regulations changes was taken care of on Tuesday, Wildlife Division director Bob Ellis gave a brief on the department's plans to continue studying the feasibility of elk in Virginia.
Ellis said the agency plans to conduct a random telephone survey of residents of seven counties in the distant Southwest section of the state.
"We want to get a feel and sense of where they put elk in their lives," Ellis said.
It's already clear where some outspoken proponents of elk in Virginia put the animals.
A vocal group of elk advocates has long complained about the DGIF's reluctance to consider an elk reintroduction program such as those that have taken place in Kentucky, Tennessee and North Carolina.
Successes of the programs in those states, where elk herds draw tourists and managed elk hunting programs draw huge interest (and dollars), has added fire to their campaign.
Kentucky's program, started in the late 1990s, has been incredibly successful.
The booming herd in the eastern part of the state -- a herd estimated at more than 10,000 animals -- has become a big tourist draw in an economically challenged area where every visitor is important.
Then there's the hunting program.
Last year, more than 30,000 applicants paid $10 each for the chance to draw an elk permit.
Those lucky enough to draw gladly paid the $30 fee for their tags.
But elk have critics, too.
Huge and hungry elk can wreak havoc on crops and gardens. And while auto collisions with deer can be bad, the laws of physics dictate that they can be much worse when the animal weighs 500 pounds or more.
Disease has been a key concern of state game officials, who have worried that elk transported from Western states might bring with them afflictions that could spread to the state's wild whitetails or even domestic cattle herds.
Among them is chronic wasting disease, an always-fatal neurological disease of deer and elk that can not be tested for while the animals are alive.
As elk started wandering into Virginia, DGIF officials established liberal hunting regulations, their strong protectionist route accepted by plenty of hunters for whom protecting whitetails from CWD has been a priority.
The rules allow hunters to use a regular deer tag on any elk they kill. And, even though hunters are largely restricted to killing only antlered deer in some of the whitetail-poor Virginia counties where elk are sometimes found, elk of any sex are legal during any deer season.
Even with the rules Virginia hunters rarely kill more than an elk or two each season.
Disease worries have faded, to a degree.
Bordering states -- in part because of disease worries of their own and because established herds are growing naturally -- are no longer importing elk from the West.
No evidence of imported disease has been found in the established herds, which have now gone through years of natural reproduction and from which it seems likely that any elk that end up in Virginia will come, be it through natural migration or stocking.
The survey will hit 2,000 randomly selected residents of Dickenson, Buchanan and Wise counties, which seem to be getting most of Virginia's wandering elk.
Another 2,000 residents of Lee, Russell, Tazewell and Scott counties also will be surveyed.
The survey will touch only residents who own at least two acres, a figure that DGIF officials hope will help focus on residents who may be likely to have one of those nice home gardens to which even a small herd of elk can lay waste in moments.
Ellis said the agency plans to report the survey results to the board by late October.
Of course, even if a majority of respondents say they'd love to see an elk herd in Virginia's coalfields, the game department is under no obligation to pursue establishing an official elk program.
But, with our neighbors having proven that elk can work in Appalachia, bucking public sentiment to keep Virginia all but elk-free could prove to be a tougher sell than it was to sell the current conservative approach.
