Page 57 - Flathead Beacon // 9.23.15

MOUNTAIN EXPOSURE
OUTDOORS IN BRIEF
BARN BASH
BEACON FILE PHOTO
Flathead Land Trust is celebrating its 30th anniversary celebration and fundraiser on Sept. 26 starting at 5:30 p.m. The event will be hosted
at the Diamond B Ranch, a 190-acre working farm and conservation easement along the Flathead River. Guests will enjoy a local farm-to-table dinner prepared by Tim Good of the Cuisine Machine, live music by Jack Gladstone, Phil Aaberg, and Dave Griffith, and a live and silent auction
of outdoor experience packages and historic memorabilia. For more information or to purchase tickets, go to www.flatheadlandtrust.org or call 406-752-8293. Tickets are $75 per person or $125 per couple.
If you would like to be featured in “Mountain Exposure,” email information to [email protected].
OUT OF BOUNDS ROB BREEDING A WHOLE MESS OF ELK
IFIRST GOT TO KNOW ELK, IN OF all places, the sagebrush plains of the Eastern Sierra in California near the Nevada border. Those were tule elk, the smallest North American subspecies.
Tule elk were once abundant west of the Sierra, where an estimated 500,000 roamed California’s vast Central Valley. But like most elk populations in the U.S., as settlers moved West the animals were hunted for food and to eliminate compe- tition with livestock, nearly to the point of extinction.
Near extinction for tule elk, as some sources on the Internet have it, was just two animals, a breeding pair. This tale is a reminder that not everything you read online is true. More reliable are the accounts that put the numbers closer to a couple dozen, all rounded up as the last of the Central Valley wetlands were drained for farmland. Those animals became the source for the herds that now dot Califor- nia. There are about 4,000 tule elk there today.
Tule elk remain on just the fringes of their native range in the Central Val- ley. That’s farm country, one of the great sources of fresh produce for the entire country. While most folks consider elk as a kind of majestic part of the land- scape, for farmers they are a crop-tram- pling, grass-eating nuisance. That’s why tule elk ended up east of the mountains where the Great Basin Desert noses up to the base of the Sierra Nevada.
It’s not really ideal tule elk habitat, but as the captive herd began to grow that was one part of the state willing to tolerate the animals. The Eastern Sierra is sparsely populated, and there has never been much agriculture in the region because in the early 1900s Los Angeles bought up all the water rights and farmland so the Depart- ment of Water and Power could ship the water south to irrigate growth in the West Coast’s largest city.
I didn’t get a chance to hunt those elk,
but I did write about them as some of the first special permits were awarded by draw soon before I left California. Oddly, I remember most of the bulls killed had broken tines on their antlers. The guys at the sporting goods shop in the town of Bishop told me the brittle antlers were a result of poor nutrition. They’re called tule elk for a reason: the species evolved in rich marshlands that once covered the Central Valley.
Two other elk subspecies didn’t sur- vive the human wave that swept west in the 1800s. Eastern elk were native to the country east of the Mississippi and Mer- riam’s elk inhabited the high country of the southwest, especially Arizona. Both species were exterminated by the early 1900s. Rocky Mountain elk have been introduced into both regions to replace the extinct subspecies, and I once had the pleasure of reporting on an elk capture in northern Arizona so the animals could be relocated in Kentucky. I got a helicopter ride out of that assignment.
Merriam’s were noted as being espe- cially large elk, though they were gone before anyone could formally study them. The legend was that they grew large, pal- mated antlers, a story influenced by the fact that there are only three confirmed pair of Merriam’s antler remains. One set of horns sports thick antlers that look a little moose like. But that’s not all that unique. My friend, the Elk Hunter, has a coffee table decorated with sheds she has collected near Yellowstone, and one antler in particular looks a lot like that famous Merriam’s rack.
Tule, Merriam’s, eastern, they all
Suitable conservation uses include:
✔ Erosion control Montana.
share a common ancestor, and the east-
were probably never isolated from one
another the way tule were from other elk subspecies. Besides tule, for all we really
Do you need tree or shrub seedlings for next spring’s conservation project?
ern and Rocky Mountain subspecies
Order Deadline: February 29, 2016 August is conservation month—a time to
know their just one species spread out across North America.
celebrate local conservation efforts across
Anyway, I’m just glad they’re back. ✔ Shelterbelts
Rob Breeding writes and teaches when he’s not fishing or hunting.
✔ Reforestation
On Haskill Creek, near Whitefish, the Flathead
Conservation District
h
as
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,200 feet of
riverbank, with a mix of vegetated soil lifts,
in
d
to
b
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✔
✔ Wildlife habitat
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s
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SEPTEMBER 23, 2015 // FLATHEADBEACON.COM
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