Some of the Players

Cal Groen is the Clearwater Regional Supervisor for the Idaho Fish & Game Dept. He has been one of the key people dealing with the declining elk herds in the Clearwater. He's a strong believer in partnerships, between Fish & Game, the Forest Service, and the State of Idaho. "If we manage the animals by ourselves, and they manage the habitat by themselves, we won't get there," he says.

"This is a very complex issue. I like to think of it as a four legged stool. (1) Hunter Numbers. Fish & Game has capped and reduced hunter numbers by half. (2) Controlling Access, so elk are more secure. (3) Habitat and (4) and predators. We have healthy populations of bears and lions. We're not getting the calf/cow ratios, the survival that we need from calves. It's less than 24 calves per 100 cows. Sometimes it has dropped less than ten. We're increasing hunter opportunity to harvest bears and to harvest lions."

"But it's bigger than predators. We have habitat structure that influences predators. What happens now is that, in the past we had thirty or forty percent of the area in openings. Now it's less than fifteen percent. So, in the spring, what happens? The cow elk go to calve in these open areas. The bears come out; they want to eat vegetation, so they go to the open areas. They meet; they're forced into much smaller and restricted areas. You get an interaction there."

"Mother Nature has not been allowed to work. We've suppressed fires. We have an unnatural situation. That's affected some of our wildlife populations... A lot of people don't understand how complex the problem is. Some say it's the bear, it's the lion, it's the wolf, it's the hunters, it's the vegetation, it's the lack of timber harvest. There has to be patience. We have to work on a number of fronts to deal with this, to get the balance we need... And I think some don't realize how important Elk is to Idaho's quality of life. We want to keep that for folks."