Operation Estes Storm

Park Service releases controversial plan to slaughter elk in Rocky Mountain National Park, eschews wolves

For Immediate Release

(Boulder, CO) The National Park Service today released a final plan to use sharpshooters to kill thousands of elk in Rocky Mountain National Park, ignoring important lessons learned in Yellowstone National Park. The plan calls for sharpshooters and other unnatural management activities to be used to reduce and redistribute elk in the Park instead of considering wolf reintroduction.

“Today is a sad day for Rocky Mountain National Park,” said Rob Edward, the Director of Carnivore Restoration for Sinapu. “Today, the Park Service let politics and timidity triumph over science and common sense,” said Edward, referring to the fact that wolves released into Yellowstone National Park had done–in less than a decade–what the Park Service plans to do in Rocky Mountain National Park over many years using sharpshooters.

Edward stated that Sinapu and Forest Guardians intend to sue the Park Service over the plan, and said that other litigation is presently in the works regarding the National Park Service’s refusal to restore wolves as part of the agency’s legal mandate. The two groups filed a notice in November with Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne and National Park Service Director Mary Bomar indicating their intent to sue over the National Park Service’s lack of planning for wolf recovery within Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. The notice gives the government 60 days to respond to the claims raised.

“The managers of our federal lands must be good stewards of the wildlife on those lands,” said Edward. He stated the Endangered Species Act makes very clear that federal land management agencies must act to further the conservation of endangered species. “Why the government would choose to spend millions of dollars and turn our national park into a nocturnal shooting range for a problem that should be solved eloquently, by wolves, is puzzling,” said Edward.

John Horning, Executive Director of Forest Guardians in Santa Fe, underscored the need for the Park Service to be proactive on wolf recovery. “The vegetation of Rocky Mountain National Park is being rapidly depleted by scores of elk, and the Park Service’s plan is to have sharpshooters kill thousands of these elk under the cover of darkness,” said Horning. “Yet, as we’ve seen in Yellowstone, reintroducing wolves to the park can quickly and permanently restore the balance of nature and bring the entire ecosystem back to life.” Horning pointed to published scientific information from Yellowstone that shows that native plants regenerate more quickly if elk are kept on the move by wolves, and that culling elk is not necessary if wolves are present.

Edward indicated that the plan to cull elk in the park would cost millions of dollars and stands little chance of long-term success.

The Endangered Species Act’s Section 7 requires federal agencies to conserve federally protected species, including taking all measures possible to achieve species recovery. Horning and Edward agreed that the National Park Service is missing a perfect opportunity to meet two conservation objectives under the present plan: restoring wolves and protecting the park’s plants from sedentary elk.

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Rocky Mountain National Park to release elk reduction strategy this summer

(AP) — The elk whose mating rituals draw thousands of visitors to Rocky Mountain National Park each fall are in the cross hairs — literally — because there are too many of them.

The problem is the elk have altered the park’s ecosystem by eating aspens and willows into near oblivion, wiping out habitat for beavers and birds. They also amble through the yards and gardens of homes outside the park, increasing chances for conflicts with people.

But the park’s recommended solution — using sharpshooters to cull the herd at night — has stirred opposition from hunters, environmentalists and even members of Congress. A final plan is due this summer.

Biologists estimate there were from 2,200 to 3,000 elk in the park and surrounding valley. The numbers have fluctuated, dropping recently to 1,700 to 2,200 as some elk have moved farther east, possibly because of drought followed by rough winters. The goal is a population of 1,200 to 1,700.

Park biologist Therese Johnson said the area’s elk densities — up to 285 per square mile in some prime winter range — are the highest recorded for a free-ranging herd in the Rockies.

North Dakota’s Theodore Roosevelt National Park faces a similar dilemma, where the public is pressuring park managers to enlist hunters rather than taxpayer-funded shooters to reduce the elk herd. An exception is Grand Teton National Park in northwestern Wyoming. The 1950 law that approved the park allowed hunting to help keep down elk numbers because of the area’s limited winter range.

Rocky Mountain National Park officials said involving hunters was discussed to control the herd but wasn’t among the options in a preliminary plan released last year because of legal hurdles. A 1929 law bans hunting in the park. Development has limited hunting outside park boundaries.

“There are also 90 years of expectations that visitors can recreate here and not be displaced by hunters,” park spokeswoman Kyle Patterson said.

The option backed by park officials in a draft 20-year elk management plan calls for contractors or federal employees to shoot between 200 and 700 elk annually in the first four years and 25 to 150 each year after that.

Park officials recommended that the shooting be done at night with guns equipped with silencers and night-vision scopes to keep the culling out of public view. The program’s cost was estimated at $18 million, although Patterson said it likely will be lower in the final document. The cost includes research, monitoring and fencing to protect vegetation from overgrazing.

Other alternatives in the plan include elk birth control and releasing a limited number of wolves in the park. Biologist Johnson said the wolves’ biggest benefit would be keeping the elk on the run so they wouldn’t graze too much in one spot.

More than 100 years ago, there were no elk in the park. They were eliminated late in the 19th century by unregulated hunting.

An Estes Park civic club rallied a couple years before the park was created in 1915 to restore elk to the area by relocating them from other areas. With wolves wiped out by hunting and government extermination, elk flourished. The park controlled the size of the herd by moving some elk to other areas and culling by federal and state wildlife officers.

The herd started expanding in the late 1960s when National Park Service philosophy began relying on natural processes — predators, weather, hunting outside parks — to manage wildlife.

Environmentalists see the restoration of wolves to the area as the best answer and one that has worked in Yellowstone National Park.

Yellowstone’s elk herd grew largely unchecked in part because of the loss of most predators. That changed when wolves were released there in 1995.

“The Park Service has a mandate to restore and protect natural ecological processes,” said Rob Edward of Sinapu, a Boulder-based group that advocates restoration of wolves in the southern Rockies.

The Colorado Division of Wildlife has its own preference: using licensed hunters rather than federal employees or contractors to shoot the elk. State officials say hunters would do it for free and use the meat.

The idea also has gained bipartisan support in Congress. Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colo., Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., and Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., have sponsored bills authorizing the two parks in their states to allow hunters to thin elk herds.

By Judith Kohler, Associated Press (click here for original article).

Livestock a major threat to environment

UN report says remedies urgently needed

Rome – Which causes more greenhouse gas emissions, rearing cattle or driving cars?

Surprise!

According to a new report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the livestock sector generates more greenhouse gas emissions as measured in CO2 equivalent – 18 percent – than transport. It is also a major source of land and water degradation.

Says Henning Steinfeld, Chief of FAO’s Livestock Information and Policy Branch and senior author of the report: “Livestock are one of the most significant contributors to today’s most serious environmental problems. Urgent action is required to remedy the situation.”

With increased prosperity, people are consuming more meat and dairy products every year. Global meat production is projected to more than double from 229 million tonnes in 1999/2001 to 465 million tonnes in 2050, while milk output is set to climb from 580 to 1043 million tonnes.

Long shadow

The global livestock sector is growing faster than any other agricultural sub-sector. It provides livelihoods to about 1.3 billion people and contributes about 40 percent to global agricultural output. For many poor farmers in developing countries livestock are also a source of renewable energy for draft and an essential source of organic fertilizer for their crops.

But such rapid growth exacts a steep environmental price, according to the FAO report, Livestock’s Long Shadow -Environmental Issues and Options. “The environmental costs per unit of livestock production must be cut by one half, just to avoid the level of damage worsening beyond its present level,” it warns.

When emissions from land use and land use change are included, the livestock sector accounts for 9 percent of CO2 deriving from human-related activities, but produces a much larger share of even more harmful greenhouse gases. It generates 65 percent of human-related nitrous oxide, which has 296 times the Global Warming Potential (GWP) of CO2. Most of this comes from manure.

To read this entire article, click here.