2014-2024 Idaho Elk Plan
September 22, 2013
Dear Commissioner Trevey,
I guess I have spent the best part of the last two months going over some of the history of our great Idaho elk herds and the management and mismanagement of them. Every thing in the document, I can back up with documentation. The elk plan for the last 33 years has been a disaster, The elk population has only went one way, DOWN!! Thank you for your time and effort to help return the elk population to what it used to be. If we can be of any help we are here and always available to help.
Jim Hagedorn
Idaho for Wildlife Foundation
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Attached letter:
2014-2024 Idaho Elk Plan
Dear Commissioner Trevey:
Commissioner, how does this Department expect to manage elk and other wildlife when they don’t know the number of what they have, also they don’t know what they have where. I have gone through this new draft elk management plan several times. Not one time do I see a plan to manage and increase elk? I only see a plan to manage people. Most of the zones in trouble have not been counted since 2007, 2008 and 2009.
The first 76 pages spend most of the ink telling us how many elk we have (107,000). They don’t know. How could they know? When you don’t count them how could you know? How can you develop a plan (developed by folks that only spend time in front of computers) that is a misleading survey of 5,000 to 7,000 hunters that less than 3,000 responded to because of the contradicting questions? Nothing in this draft plan mentions bringing elk numbers back to what they were in the early 90’s. As far as the web page, most folks don’t have the time and many don’t do the computer, we have a hard enough time understanding the Regulations.
Predator management!! Page 5. Their thought, predator control is often complex and quite expensive. Commissioner just stop and look at what has been the cost to the department in lost license sales, the millions of dollars each year to the economy, the hardship in the small local communities that depend on the businesses that have closed due to the loss of elk numbers. The department’s response to predator control is disgusting.
The option C tags for another $30.00 for residents and $100.00 for non-residents. Just another money grab, the folks that want this are the same folks that will buy a non-resident tag if they fill their first tag. When we have such poor recruitment in most zones now and have controlled hunts why do we need to do this? The wolves do a good job of switching zones now!! No C-tag.
If we are going to increase elk numbers we need more and better bear seasons. Black bear are everywhere and they have little fear of humans. In the 80’s into the 90’s bear season was open year around. We had baiting in most all front units. We had very few bear in the parks, folk’s back yards and such. They stayed where they belonged. The department has no idea of the number and the density of Black Bear, wolves, cougars and Grizzly bear. Again we need more liberal bear seasons. We like what the Commission has done with the liberal wolf season. If the Commissioners had not been firm and made the Department do it we would still be looking at a lot more wolves than we have now. The sooner we get to 250 the better.
In summery the first 76 pages deal mostly with Habitat, propaganda and the summit, “which is another story”. I have a copy of the January 1999 Elk Ten Year Plan. If you take a look at it, someone did a good job to copy most all of it from page 78 on. The objective didn’t change in many of the zones from the 1999 elk plan.
I guess we need another study. If you want a good accurate study, my suggestion would be to give report cards to each C.O. When he or she makes contact with the 80,000+ sportsmen and women, he or she could give them a pre addressed, pre stamped card to fill out with some simple questions and returned to the department. This would be good for all employees that make contact with folks. What about the monthly breakfasts? This would give you a true feeling of what the license buying public is thinking out here.
The number 1 objective of the department should be, increase the huntable big game, small game, and birds. This would sure increase the license sales, and then the department would not need a fee increase. Unless they do this they will have to down size because sportsmen and women will not stand for an increase in fees, when the department has very little to sell. The theory in business – YOU DEVELOP AND HAVE A GOOD PRODUCT, THEY WILL COME.
(Facts & Recommendation No. 1.)
When former IDFG Director Joe Greenley's elk plan rebuilt the elk season from the mid 1970s through 1985, it eliminated ALL female elk harvest (except for short either-sex seasons in Panhandle units) and shortened - or closed - bull elk seasons in the rest of the state.
The only controlled elk hunts were for a tiny number of bull permits in closed units where even a 3-day general season would have prevented recovery.
The Clearwater Region shortened the bull elk season and implemented cheap two-bear hunts in the Lolo and Selway to dramatically reduce bear kill of elk calves, and by 1985 the Clearwater units and a few adjacent units were again providing most of Idaho’s elk kill. In 1985, Units 10 and 12 (the Lolo Zone) had 20,115 total elk, the hunter harvest was 1,430 and the elk were increasing by 805 per year.
The 1985 Hansen-Kaminski wolf study used those 1985 figures to project that Units 10 and 12 could support a population of 45 wolves of the 219 total projected for the 20,700 square mile Central Idaho wolf recovery area.
But Conley replaced retiring Joe Greenley in 1980 and as soon as the 1976-1985 Plan was ended the 22-year Clearwater study ended (both in 1985) Conley directed his biologist to forget the predators and sell even more elk hunting opportunity.
By 1989, the Unit 10 and 12 elk population had declined to only 15,270 total elk, the hunter harvest had increased to 1,975, and instead of increasing by 805 per year the herd had decreased by an average of 1,211 elk per year for four years. This meant the Lolo Zone could not support any wolves yet they kept this information secret until long after the wolves were first transplanted.
Despite the increasing decline in total elk numbers, Herb Pollard continued to kill too many bulls and cows, and ignore the need to control predators. For 1996 he increased the Lolo Zone cow elk permits from 350 to 1,900! When Cal Groen took over for Pollard, he continued the unprecedented number of Lolo cow permits.
Also in 1997, the Elk Team had presented five options for elk management to the Commission and was told to scope them with the public and come back with the two most popular options so the Commission could choose one or the other. The scoping meetings revealed that stratified hunts (the A-B Tag System) and limited controlled hunts were the two least popular but the biologists wanted them because they provided more revenue and less work.
So the Commission was given two wrong choices to make and they chose both of them. Most outfitters and some elk hunters believe these methods limit the number of other hunters in their chosen hunt area but the major thing that limits elk hunters in an area is poor harvest success.
The manipulation of these A-B seasons and/or controlled hunts to receive the most income destroyed our elk before the wolves even killed enough of them to be measured. Pretending that putting a cap on the number of A or B tags - or selling extra chances to harvest elk in a lottery - will magically restore our elk has obviously proved false.
It is my opinion; I would never ask or agree to IDFG or the Commission conducting any survey. When former IDFG Director Joe Greenley was hired and he discarded 10 years of exaggerated harvest surveys, he told his biologist that he would not accept any new harvest survey unless it was designed and certified by a qualified statistician.
In 1997 E. O. “Oz” Garton was hired by U of I immediately after he received his MS and then PhD from Univ.-Davis. The harvest survey Garton designed were as bad as the ones Greenley discarded and after Greenley retired in 1980 Lonn Kuck restored the 10 years of exaggerated surveys.
Whither it’s a hunter survey or an opinion survey, every one of Garton’s products that we challenge results in his claim that it only needs a little more “tweaking”. In reality his harvest surveys were all inaccurate at the unit level and his opinion surveys always had slanted questions to gain pre-determined answers. Even after his semi-retirement he is still involved.
Ever since Mike Schlegel finished his portion of the 22-year Clearwater Elk Ecology Study, almost every IDFG biologist I know has refused to make any sincere effort to either restore or halt the decline of the depleted elk herds. Yet they keep writing their B. S. to pretend they are actually trying to restore our big game, instead of publicly admitting their only intention is to keep receiving license money to spend on their voodoo wildlife philosophy.
Maybe it would be good to reinforce my closing sentence with the numbers of non residents deer and elk tags not yet sold as of the latest date on their web site - Sept. 13 - 10622 deer tags and 7558 elk tags not sold and the licenses revenue lost. I think habitat loss is just a straw man to turn the reasons for decline in population numbers.
