The I-70 Scout & Eastern Colorado News

Tag: Elk

Elk rescued from mine shaft

CREEDE, Colo. – The wind blew hard and cold on Saturday in the upper Rio Grande Valley and it was not the kind of day that Chere Waters would normally pick to hike up a blustery hillside.

“I don’t know what it was, but something was drawing me to go up there,” Waters said.

Whatever the mysterious calling, her intuition led her to an old mine shaft which, in turn, led to an unusual rescue of a 250-pound cow elk by Colorado Parks and Wildlife officers and local emergency responders on April 18.

A Creede resident for 34 years, Waters decided to go to a trail off the Bachelor Loop Road just outside of town. She told her hiking partner they would go to an area she’d been to years ago where she remembered seeing a mine shaft.

Waters said she surprised herself when she walked the mile from her vehicle right up to the opening. She saw the hole from about 10 yards away and tossed a rock in, hoping to get a sense of the depth of the shaft.

“It’s the scariest thing, it’s at the edge of some trees so it’s hard to see,” she said.

But even though she sensed some danger, she decided to look in. So she “belly crawled” on the ground and had her friend hold onto her ankles so she could peer over the edge.

“So I looked in and see this animal in there. I was so surprised, I couldn’t believe it,” Waters said.

She didn’t bring her phone but luckily her friend did. They contacted the sheriff’s department at about 2 p.m., and a little over an hour later Wildlife Officers Brent Woodward and Jeremy Gallegos arrived, along with Mineral County Sheriff’s officers.

“When I got the call I was told that a deer was stuck in a hole,” Woodward said. “But they thought the shaft was only about 10 feet deep. When I got there I could see it was an elk and it was probably 30 feet down.”

He could also see the animal’s tracks at the edge of the hole.

Woodward darted the elk from above with a tranquilizer to knock it out temporarily. The shaft was not too far from an old four-wheel drive trail so they were able to get vehicles close. Using a winch from one of the trucks, Terry Wetherill, Mineral Count emergency and search and rescue manger, was lowered into the hole. He estimated the size at about 10 feet by 3 feet so he had enough room to place some straps around the animal.

He said that over the years he’s pulled deer and elk out of barbed-wire fences, “but I’ve never had to pull one out of a hole.”

In 1889, miners flocked to Creede at the start of a silver boom. Wetherill said there are dozens of old mine shafts in the area but most of them have collapsed and filled in over the years. He’s been told about many but not about the one where the elk fell. The walls of the shaft are still secured with timbers; Wetherill said the opening has probably been there for more than 100 years.

“It’s dangerous, it’s in the shadows and until you’re 20 feet away you don’t see it,” he said.

Wetherill is talking to officials at the Rio Grande National Forest office and Mineral County to determine ownership of the shaft so that it can be covered.

The elk was pulled up slowly and Woodward described its condition as “pretty beat up.” He thought it could have been there for two or three days.

“It’s amazing that those ladies saw it,” Woodward said.

Back on the surface, the officers allowed the elk to lie on the ground for about 15 minutes while they examined its condition. Then Gallegos administered a drug that reverses the tranquilizer effects. It took a few minutes for it to stand up on shaky legs.

“When she stood up, she moved a few yards, turned and looked at us for a few seconds and then turned and trotted away. It was great that we could get her out alive,” Woodward said.

Waters and her friend stayed for the rescue and took pictures. She said they were so happy that the elk survived. But Waters, who owns C. Waters Gallery in Creede, said she’s still wondering what took her to that particular spot last Saturday.

“I was just so called to go to that place.”

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April 23, 2020
New five-year GPS collaring study launched to help with Front Range elk management

Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologists and wildlife officers have launched a five-year elk collaring study to obtain data that will help to better manage the Clear Creek elk herd.

Over 40 GPS satellite collars will be deployed on cow (female) elk across the herd’s range to better understand elk movements, reproductive rates, migration patterns and habitat use.

Capture work will be accomplished with helicopters and ground darting and trapping. The location information from the GPS collars will help inform wildlife managers of possible management strategies related to herd management plan objectives and habitat use. Elk locations will also aid land management agencies in land use planning decisions.

Project work is being done in collaboration with private landowners, city and county open space departments (Jefferson and Boulder Counties), United States Forest Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“This project will help inform local management decisions. What we’ve noticed in the last couple of years is that elk are spending more time on open space and golf courses,” said biologist Ben Kraft, who is spearheading this project. “This project will help develop management strategies at both the local and herd level. Determining when and where elk occur and how many will there are is the first step in mitigating some of the issues CPW and land managers and owners are currently experiencing.”

Capture work started in Golden on Dec. 19 on the Club at Rolling Hills and Fossil Trace Golf Club. Work then shifted to Rocky Flats with the USFWS and will move along to the other locations. The team is hopeful to get all of the collars out by the end of March 2021.

The main purpose of the collars is to help us collect baseline data on elk distribution and obtain better estimates of vital rates on the herd.

“CPW hasn’t conducted a collar study on this elk herd,” Kraft said. “What we know at this point is that distribution is changing, so we are trying to get a handle on that change and the interaction with land use and the Front Range’s growing human population.

“As previously mentioned, another goal of this project is gaining a better understanding of demographics of the herd. As is the usual practice in most areas of the state, we can’t fly to classify and survey these elk, so using collared elk as “Judas” elk when we conduct ground surveys in Februarys will give us a better idea of recruitment and in which direction the population is trending.”

The collars will give locations twice a day, but if we have other management objectives, say we are looking at how trails impact distribution, then we can get more frequent data in those areas. It will be tailored to the specific sub-herds we are investigating.

Previous studies collaring elk in Estes Park and Rabbit Mountain on Boulder County Open Space have taught us a lot about distribution and land use.

“We’ve learned not only what the current distribution is, but we’ve seen shifts in elk distribution in real time as land use has changed,” Kraft said. “We know that elk are really adaptable to all kinds of factors on the landscape like recreation, development and open space areas have become a really big magnet for elk herds.”

Deciding on what management tactics to implement once we get a clear picture from the data can be a hard question to address.

Hunting is our No. 1 management tool, and it has proven very effective in urban areas and on open space.

“We’ve done that up north in Boulder County on Rabbit Mountain and have been very successful implementing those kinds of public harvest programs,” Kraft said. “So I think in these areas, and specifically on Jefferson County Open Space, I think we can implement some of those management strategies and the main push for that would be to redistribute elk back to the west so they are not forming resident herds in the foothills along urban interface areas. Trying to get them to get back into more of a natural movement and migration pattern is the primary goal.”

This growing urban elk herd creates human safety concerns, causes damage to agricultural operations, presents challenges for herd and disease management and we are seeing habitat degradation across the landscape. Damage done by these urban elk herds can be costly.

The golf courses in Golden are seeing tens of thousands of dollars in damage from the elk each year, as over 100 elk feed on the courses year-round. Some Golden residents have brought concerns forward to CPW staff about the safety of their children, pets, landscaping and traffic safety when elk are in their neighborhoods.

“As the elk continue to move east, there is growing concern for human safety,” said Wildlife Officer Jerrie McKee. “I-70 lies just a half mile to the east of where the elk now commonly travel.”

And that takes us back to one of the primary objectives of this study – distribution. What can we learn from their movement and can we try to redistribute the elk back to the west out of town where it will be safer for both them and the people.

Watch as crews place the first collars out on the elk for the study

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February 20, 2020
Colorado Wolf Ballot Initiative Preys on Elk, Hunting, Taxpayers

LAS VEGAS, Nev. – Colorado’s economy, elk population, conservation funding, hunting industry and resident taxpayer dollars are in the crosshairs. An environmental extremist-driven ballot initiative aims to force an introduction of wolves onto the Colorado landscape even though Colorado Parks and Wildlife confirmed a natural migrating, active pack in the northwest part of the state.

“Ballot box biology is reckless. In this particular case, it totally undermines the authority of Colorado’s wildlife professionals who have said time and time again over several decades that a forced wolf introduction is a bad idea,” said Kyle Weaver, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation president and CEO. “As an organization, RMEF pledges to do all in our power to educate voters about the significant, real-life, detrimental impacts of such an effort.”

RMEF first warned about the initiative proposal three years ago. Since then, environmental extremists have raised more than $1 million, the lion’s share of it from out-of-state donors, to gather and deliver 215,000 (of nearly six million residents) petition signatures to the Colorado secretary of state. Staffers later deemed 76,037 or 35.3 percent of projected signatures as invalid but approved the measure for the 2020 ballot by a projected margin of 1.8 percent.

Colorado is home to the largest elk herd in North America, yet researchers in the southwest part of the state are trying to figure out why elk recruitment is ailing.

RMEF has a long history in Colorado. Since 1987, RMEF and its partners completed 782 conservation and hunting heritage outreach projects with a combined value of more than $177.7 million. These projects protected or enhanced 468,068 acres of habitat and opened or improved public access to 122,107 acres. There are also more than 17,000 RMEF members and 28 chapters in the state.

“Proponents are offering zero funding for wolf management, livestock or pet depredation, deterrent measures, research or other costs. Yet they expect Colorado taxpayers and hunters to foot a bill that will be millions upon millions of dollars. As outdoorsmen and women who care about wildlife and our wild landscapes, we must unite and fight against this measure,” added Weaver.

Founded more than 35 years ago, fueled by hunters and a membership of nearly 235,000 strong, RMEF has conserved more than 7.9 million acres for elk and other wildlife. RMEF also works to open and improve public access, fund and advocate for science-based resource management, and ensure the future of America’s hunting heritage. Discover why “Hunting Is Conservation™” at rmef.org or 800-CALL ELK.

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January 25, 2020
Restoring wildlife habitat in western Colorado starts with native seeds

DOVE CREEK, Colo. – Good habitat is the key for maintaining wildlife populations. So Colorado Parks and Wildlife is working in western Colorado to restore abandoned farmland and other areas back to a natural condition.

On a freezing November morning on the western edge of Colorado, Ryan Lane, a CPW wildlife technician, drove an open tractor back and forth across a 400-acre expanse of the Coalbed Canyon State Wildlife Area. The tractor pulled a specialized planter, known as a no-till drill that pushed seeds from 30 different native plants into the dry soil. Late fall is a good time for planting these types of seeds ‒ with snow and rain usually reliable at this time of year getting the seed down ahead of moisture is ideal.

Since 2014, CPW has been working aggressively in several areas throughout western Colorado to plant native seeds on: old farmland, state wildlife areas, state trust lands and areas burned in fires. Since 2015, the agency has planted on about 7,500 acres for restoration and on another 10,000 acres of areas burned in forest fires, explained Trevor Balzer, CPW’s sagebrush and mountain-shrub habitat coordinator.

One of those areas is the 2,800-acre Coalbed Canyon State Wildlife Area in southwest Colorado. In the areas level enough to plant, the parcel produced beans and wheat for decades. To accommodate agricultural crops, however, the land was stripped of sagebrush and other native plants that supported multiple species of wildlife, including the Gunnison Sage-grouse, mule deer, elk, multiple species of birds and small mammals.

Before CPW’s ownership, the fields were abandoned and planted with a fast-growing non-native grass that does not provide much value to wildlife. So in 2016, CPW started the long restoration process. The area was treated to kill the non-native grass and the planting process started. Planting in areas like Coalbed Canyon, however, can be frustrating because of dry weather conditions.

Seeds planted in the fall of 2015 and 2016 received adequate moisture, sprouted and became established. But extremely dry and hot weather followed the fall planting of 2017 and seeds did not do well in 2018. Consequently, those areas are being seeded again.

Wet conditions last spring were favorable for getting seeds to take hold, Balzer said.

CPW plants native seeds using the “no-till” method. The land is not plowed so the roots of the native existing grasses hold soil in place. New seeds are planted among the remaining vegetation.

Colorado Parks and Wildlife technician Ryan Lane holds a mixture of 30 different native seeds used to replant former farm land to benefit wildlife.

A key to reclamation efforts is CPW’s native seed warehouse in Delta that was completed in 2012. CPW and other agencies collect seeds of native plants, mostly on the Uncompahgre Plateau west of Montrose, and ship them to commercial growers in the northwest U.S. Those businesses specialize in native plant propagation and then harvest thousands of pounds of seed in amounts that cannot be collected in the wild. The seed is shipped to CPW’s climate-controlled warehouse where it is stored and distributed as needed.

“With large amounts of seed available we can take on large-scale seeding projects,” said Jim Garner, manager of the warehouse. “The warehouse allows us to provide locally adapted plant varieties to Western Slope land managers who are conducting habitat improvement projects.”

A mixture of seed from the warehouse was dropped by airplane last spring over more than 5,000 acres of the Bull Draw fire area near Nucla. That fire burned during the summer of 2018. An inspection of the area in the fall showed that native plants have started to grow.

Balzer explained that the availability of seeds of native forbs – broad-leafed flowering plants – and shrubs are especially important for reclamation efforts.

“Those weren’t readily available on the market before we had the warehouse,” he said. “They’re critical because they provide diverse food sources for all wildlife in the area. When these plants flower they attract a wide variety of insects which help to spread the plants over large areas of the landscape and restore broader habitat function.”

The planting on the 400-acre plot at Coalbed Canyon has been difficult because of wet and cold weather that hit in mid-November. That planting should be completed early in 2020 and plans are already in place to plant a 200-acre parcel next year.

Across the Western Slope, Balzer wants to stay the course of reclaiming about 1,500 acres per year. Even though that’s a small amount of acreage in a vast landscape, biologists know that their work will impact areas far beyond the individual plots.

“Getting native plants established in these areas is not easy,” Balzer said. “The process is slow and native
shrubs take many years to mature. But revisiting a successfully restored site is extremely rewarding.”

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December 30, 2019
Colorado Parks and Wildlife Starting Winter Big-Game Classification / Capture Flights in Southwest Colorado

MONTROSE, Colo. – As part of its ongoing work to monitor the health of the state’s big-game herds, Colorado Parks and Wildlife has started its winter classification and capture flights in southwest Colorado.

CPW biologists use the flights to observe and record trends in deer and elk populations. Employing survey methods used for decades, biologists are flown by helicopter over areas where animals historically congregate during the winter months. Using a specialized “counting” technique, biologists record their observations of female, male and young animals. This allows biologists to understand the ratio of male-to-female animals following the hunting seasons, and ratios of young-to-female animals going into winter.

“We use our classification data, harvest data and collar data to plug into our computer models and determine trends in the health of herds and make population estimates,” said Brad Banulis, a terrestrial biologist for CPW in Montrose.

The classification data, population models and herd-management plans provide big-game managers with the information needed for setting license numbers for the next fall’s hunting seasons.

People on the ground who sometimes see the helicopters will notice a change in the type of aircraft being used this year. In past years, CPW contracted with a company that flew a yellow helicopter – small with a large glass bubble. This year a larger, white helicopter is being used.

Besides the classification flights, CPW also utilizes helicopters for long-term studies that are examining survival of deer and elk. For example, on the Uncompahgre Plateau west of Montrose, CPW has used helicopters to catch and place telemetry collars on deer since 1997. In the Gunnison area, similar captures have been used for deer and elk-survival studies occasionally over the years.

The biggest project for the agency involves capturing and monitoring elk in the southern tier of the state where calf-to-cow ratios have been declining for the last decade. The purpose of the project, which started last spring, is to determine why survival of young elk is declining in southern Colorado. For this study, elk are being captured in the area west of Trinidad, on the Uncompahgre Plateau and in the Glenwood Springs-Carbondale area. Captures near Craig are also being done to act as a “control” in the study; elk in northern Colorado are doing very well.

Captures for the long-term elk research started last spring when about 100 cow elk were captured. Pregnant cows were fitted with telemetry collars. In the spring, technicians on the ground captured and collared newly born elk. In the next few weeks more young elk, about six months old, will be captured and collared.

The telemetry collars are GPS equipped, so biologists can watch their computers to see how elk are moving and if any animals die. In case of a mortality, biologists go to the site, examine the animals, and attempt to determine cause of death. The study is scheduled to continue for six years.

“This is a very big and important study. We expect that it will provide valuable data, but it will be at least a year before we’ll have relevant information,” Banulis said.

To learn more about big-game management in Colorado, go to: https://cpw.state.co.us/thingstodo/Pages/BigGame.aspx.

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December 11, 2019