Posted on 10/04/2005 11:37:20 AM PDT by loreldan
Colorado is struggling with too much of a good thing - elk.
The state's most majestic animals are denuding vegetation in national parks, gobbling shrubbery in Estes Park, threatening to contaminate valuable potato crops in the San Luis Valley, and destroying livestock feed on Western Slope ranchlands.
Some of the conflict lies in sheer numbers.
About 338,000 elk were in Colorado before last year's hunting season, in which 63,336 were killed. That still left Colorado with 275,000 - more elk than any other state or Canadian province.
(Excerpt) Read more at rockymountainnews.com ...
CWD will probably thin overly large populations.
True. Or wolves - if some people get their way.
We have those folks down here too.
Lots of people here in WA would like more elk to hunt. Do they have hunting permits going unclaimed? Or is the problem that they won't open up the parkland to hunting?
Complete Stranger Ping (Seems like this might be of interest to you...)
It seems amazing that the elk populations are overflowing, but yet licenses are so expensive and difficult to get.
Maybe they should import the extra mountain lions from California and let nature have it's way...
I'm not sure, but I don't think they open up park lands.
You might have something there. Had man not messed with the eco-system, it would have found its balance. Now we have to continually hustle to manage it.
I dont have elk where I live now, but when I lived at Las Vegas, NM, they were through the yard all the time. But the local poachers kept them in check.
Exactly. I burns me the cost of out of state license when they scream about stuff like this. Some states have even cut back on number of tags.
They don't... It'd take a rule change, and a major fight.
Yessir, the cost of non-resident licenses for game has become a major funding source for states with game.
bump
Well the number of tags should fluctuate depending on the population. Just because CO is overrun doesn't mean everyone else is. I don't know if they've had the right number of tags available in CO or their cost... It could be that there are tags going unused, it could be that all the elk are in unhuntable areas.
We have plenty of those too. In fact I read a few months back that because of lion overpopulation there are more and more sightings within town limits. Last month they shot one in the middle of Colorado Springs.
What about grizzlies...?
Unhuntable like in town.
There are a few of us die-hard hunters that don't believe in unreachable places. It is usually the enviro wackos that deny access.
Heh... There's a pair of deer here that spend most of their time in the greenspace between the freeway and the on/offramp. Pretty smart if you as me.... no hunters, no neighborhood dogs.... no predators. :~D
It is the same here, as immigrants move in from California and buy up property, they close it to hunting. NM is something like 80% privately owned in the first place because of the Spanish Land Grants, and in most instances you have to know someone in order to get permission to hunt on their land.
I suspect that the ranchers and farmers over on the West Slope of Colorado have about had it with out of state hunters and have shut a lot of that hunting down also. It becomes a vicious circle. I know the game warden at Canon City, and he says that they have a lot of problems with poaching. That makes things even worse.
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