Elk project aims to save animals from starvation

By Chester Allen | The Olympian • Published February 09, 2008

MOUNT ST. HELENS — Ten elk moved ghostlike across the valley floor, appearing and vanishing as they eased over the rolling terrain of the Mount St. Helens mudflow.

They stared at the green truck — and the green alfalfa hay spilling over the sides and along the muddy, potholed road that winds through the 2,744-acre Mount St. Helens Wildlife Area.

The elk — so shy and wild most of the year — headed for the food as soon as the truck was 100 yards away. Some of the elk looked thin — with hair missing in patches on their flanks.

"We came down this morning and saw them eating hay out of the back of the truck," said Brian Calkins, the state Department of Fish and Wildlife's wildlife area manager. "They're hungry."

One of the coldest, snowiest winters in years — coupled with an overpopulation of elk on Mount St. Helens — has sparked winter elk feeding on the mudflow for the second year in a row. Fish and Wildlife is feeding hay to about 400 elk a day there.

"We've seen up to 600 elk this winter already," Calkins said.

Mark and Dawn Smith, owners of the nearby Eco-Park Resort, also are feeding elk on their 90 acres along the North Fork Toutle River.

"We believe wildlife should take care of themselves, but we've been supplementing food as volunteers," Mark Smith said. "There have been changes up here and loss of elk habitat from forest regrowth, and the river comes up and washes away huge amounts of winter habitat."

The winter feeding program — which cost Fish and Wildlife about $63,000 last year — is a stop-gap measure to keep stressed elk from starving to death, Calkins said.

Elk can eat 8 to 10 pounds of hay a day.

Eventually, stepped-up hunting of the herd — which now numbers about 13,000 — will bring the population to about 10,000 elk within five years, which is the number that the land around Mount St. Helens can support, Calkins said.

But for now, it's a choice between winter feeding or seeing many elk stagger toward death by starvation or disease.

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