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Interesting Article on Elk Herd Decline in SW Colorado

Studies show other factors effecting pregnancy rates, mainly body fat. But lets not let science interfere with hysteria. There are plenty of wolves in both the east fork and west fork.


See page 34.

fwp.mt.gov/fwpDoc.html?id=73152

Science is valuable, glad we both agree...

Note from the information you shared, Page 52.

Also, Brodie et al. (2013), using data from 2,746 radio-collared adult female elk, found that the negative effects of very high winter precipitation on adult female survival were intensified in elk populations with sympatric wolves. Understanding these risk factors affecting adult female survival rates is useful in predicting survival for adult female ungulates...

Take into account WHY the loss of weight / ability to birth calves and cause for abortions at an accelerated rate...

During winter, nearly all elk in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem are losing weight, said Scott Creel, ecology professor at MSU, and lead author on the study which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"Essentially, they are slowly starving," Creel said. "Despite grazing and browsing during the winter, elk suffer a net loss of weight. If winter continued, they would all die, because dormant plants provide limited protein and energy, and snow makes it more difficult to graze efficiently."

With the presence of wolves, elk browse more - eating woody shrubs or low tree branches in forested areas where they are safer - as opposed to grazing on grass in open meadows where they are more visible, and therefore more vulnerable to wolves.

Browsing provides food of good quality, but the change in foraging habits results in elk taking in 27 percent less food than their counterparts that live without wolves, the study estimates.

"Elk regularly hunted by wolves are essentially starving faster than those not hunted by wolves," said Creel, who shares authorship on the paper with his former doctoral students John Winnie, Jr., and David Christianson.
http://www.montana.edu/news/7324/gr...nutrition-and-lower-birth-rates-due-to-wolves
 
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I used to hunt around Montrose Colorado. That area has seen less rainfall over the time I started hunting there 12 years ago. The woods just dried up. Fungus killed the aspens and exposed any seeps and grasses as they lost their leaves. The bark beetle killed off huge swaths of pines and spruce. The environment changed. The hunt pressure might have stayed the same or increased some but the reason I give for the decline in elk (and deer) in the area was the food and water and shelter were no longer able to support the current animal population so they moved on. Now, add on grazing cattle at $1.36 per month per cow/calf pair and we have even more animals competing for the same resources. Good luck with that... It breaks my heart.
 
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