A herd numbering upwards of 2,000 elk was seen on Jan. 7 when CPW was surveying this unit to look at population demographics and how the animals fared following the Cameron Peak Fire (photo courtesy of Jason Clay/CPW)

FORT COLLINS, Colo. – Despite burning 208,913 acres across Larimer County from August through December, it does not appear the Cameron Peak Fire had short-term impacts on the elk herds in Larimer County. 

Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologist Angelique Curtis took flight in a Bell 407 helicopter to survey the elk herds for the first time since the fire, which is the largest ever to burn in Colorado. She classified roughly 4,200 elk in the seven hour flight on Thursday, Jan. 7. 

Curtis used satellite GPS collars as a part of a new study launched one year ago to help locate the herds across the Laramie River Valley, Red Feather Lakes and the Cherokee State Wildlife Area. 

“The elk that we saw today actually summered up where the Cameron Peak Fire burned in the Comanche Peak Wilderness, Long Draw area and up in Dead Man,” Curtis said. “What we saw today is that the fire didn’t inhibit them from actually getting to their wintering ground and we saw some pretty good calf recruitment.

“We did see healthy animals on the ground, so the fire didn’t seem to affect them health wise.”

Depending on how hot the fire may have burned across the region, the possibility exists that productive habitat will be there for wildlife as early as this spring. The amount of moisture we receive over winter will help play a role in that. As we progress through winter and into spring, biologists and forest ecologists will have a better understanding of the outlook of the post-fire burn area.

Some of these herds numbered in the thousands, making it difficult to count the animals and record their sex and age class. Curtis relies on the pilot to not only maintain human safety while in the air, but also keep in mind the well-being of the wildlife down below.

“In order for us to properly classify them, the pilot has to go in there and actually carve off a group of 35 to 40 elk at a time and then his job is to keep those elk separated from the main herd,” Curtis said. “So when we are doing this it is definitely the pilot and his skills that get us the data we need.”

When approaching from the sky, the pilot first circles the herd to look for hazards before lowering in closer to break them up into smaller groups. This video from inside the cockpit shows that operation.

“A lot of animal welfare goes into it,” said Cameron Stallings, Chief Pilot from Aero Tech, Inc. “You don’t want to run them through fences or over cliffs or run them too long, things like that. Flying in the mountains when it is windy is difficult and there are things you have to consider there.”

This herd is classified by CPW in its Data Analysis Unit (DAU) E-4. The last time biologists surveyed this herd from the sky was in 2006. 

“The purpose of these flights is to get a classification,” Curtis said. “Classification is the cow, calf and bulls that we see on the ground and that is entered into a model and then from there we use the model to produce population estimates and to decide how many licenses we need to give out each year.”

This particular herd does not have a model. Population models are used to help CPW manage populations within the objective ranges, which include setting annual hunting license allocations. The Habitat Partnership Program(HPP), funded by revenue from the sale of big game licenses, assists CPW to meet game management objectives for deer, elk, pronghorn and moose.

It was Larimer County HPP funds that paid for the GPS satellite collars for this elk study. Funds from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation were used towards the aerial capture efforts to get the collars deployed on the elk. 

Now those collars are playing a crucial role in obtaining the data wildlife managers need. They not only assist biologists in helping locate the herds to classify them, but document movement patterns, habitat use, reproduction success and can help identify mortality causes.

“This is the first year of data and I’ll probably need another three or four years of data in order to build the model properly, but I’m getting an idea of how many elk are out on the landscape and how the elk are moving through the landscape,” Curtis said.

Potential long term effects from the fire are not yet known. It is a good sign the elk were able to make it down to their wintering grounds, but biologists are curious what next summer will bring for the herds.

“It is going to be interesting to see when they migrate back to their summer range, how that is going to affect their movement patterns and if they are going to go to the same locations as they did the previous year,” Curtis said.

Watch how biologists tracked elk movements during the Cameron Peak Fire

Photos Below (courtesy of Jason Clay/CPW)

Left: Wildlife biologist Angelique Curtis (left) and pilot Cameron Stallings (right) point out an elk herd as they fly across western Larimer County

Right: An aerial view of portions burned from the Cameron Peak Fire

 

SPREAD THE NEWS

COMMENT, Like, Follow & SHARE @I70Scout

CURRENT EDITION

WEATHER & TRAFFIC    PUZZLES    RECENT NEWS    ADVERTISE WITH US

 

DENVER (AP) — Colorado could have to navigate years of pending litigation over the Trump administration’s delisting of the gray wolf from the Endangered Species Act as it tries to enact its own voter-approved initiative to reintroduce the predator to the state, top wildlife officials were told Thursday.

Lisa Reynolds, the state’s first assistant attorney general, told the Colorado Parks and Wildlife Commission her office expects years of litigation over the federal delisting of wolves, which took effect Jan. 4. That delisting handed over management of wolves in Colorado from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to the state.

Indeed, two coalitions of advocacy groups asked the U.S. District Court in Northern California on Thursday to overturn the U.S. government decision.

Though delisting made it easier for Colorado to act, legal uncertainty over the future of the wolf’s endangered status _ even a potential reversal of the administration’s decision _ could hand authority back to the federal government, severely complicating the state’s ability to implement the proposition, Reynolds said.

Colorado voters narrowly approved Proposition 114 in November. It requires the reintroduction of the gray wolf, which was hunted, trapped and poisoned into extermination here in the 1940s, be underway by Dec. 31, 2023, on public lands in the sparsely populated Western Slope of the Continental Divide.

Dozens of rural county commissions and agricultural, business and sportsmen’s groups opposed the initiative. They cited a threat to livestock and to a $1 billion hunting industry based on elk, deer and moose that supports 25,000 jobs.

The measure passed thanks to votes from the highly urbanized areas that line the Denver-Fort Collins-Colorado Springs metropolitan area.

Advocates see reintroduction in Colorado as a vital step in restoring the wolf to habitat stretching from the Canadian to the Mexican border. Wolves were reintroduced in the Northern Rockies in the 1990s. About 2,000 wolves are in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, Washington and northern California, and Colorado officials are consulting those states in its own planning, said Eric Odell, species conservative program manager for Colorado Parks and Wildlife.

A remnant population in the western Great Lakes region has since expanded to about 4,400 wolves in Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin. A small population of Mexican gray wolves remains protected in the Southwest.

At least two lone wolves and a small pack, likely from Wyoming’s Yellowstone National Park, have been sighted since 2019 in northwestern Colorado, Odell said. Opponents of the initiative said that shows wolves already are in Colorado and that reintroducing them is unnecessary.

Democratic Gov. Jared Polis has urged Colorado Parks and Wildlife to quickly implement the initiative. Dan Gibbs, executive director of the state Department of Natural Resources, challenged the commissioners on Thursday to get paws on the ground by 2022 or early 2023, well ahead of the proposition’s deadline.

“The voters have spoken. The directive is clear,” Gibbs intoned.

By spring or summer, state wildlife officials will start identifying donor populations and locations for reintroduction; slowly begin development of a management plan; and create procedures for settling claims by ranchers, farmers and others who lose livestock to or have property damaged by wolves.

Part of the effort will be led by a working group involving state and federal agencies such as Fish and Wildlife, the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Forest Service, as well as Native American tribes, said Reid DeWalt, a CPW assistant director.

Several witnesses implored commissioners to fully involve West Slope residents in the process. Managing their worries and expectations among residents still polarized over the issue is as great a task as any, Odell said.

“The greatest challenge to us is social and political, rather than biological issues,” he said. “That’s part of wildlife management.”

 

SPREAD THE NEWS

COMMENT, Like, Follow & SHARE @I70Scout

CURRENT EDITION

WEATHER & TRAFFIC    PUZZLES    RECENT NEWS    ADVERTISE WITH US