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Jun 27, 2009 - 04:05:18 CDT
Bismarck Tribune
By LAUREN DONOVBy LAUREN DONOVAN
Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., has made good on a threat to use Congress to force Theodore Roosevelt National Park to let qualified North Dakota hunters thin an overpopulated elk herd.
Dorgan, a member of the Senate Interior Department's appropriations subcommittee, inserted bill language that says the park can't use annual funds to reduce elk unless it allows volunteer hunters who can keep the meat.
The language cleared the committee this week and when fully endorsed - which he expects will be the case - will replace any alternative the park comes up with, Dorgan said.
He said he's not promoting wide-open hunting in the park, only a very selective public taking of animals by deputized, qualified hunters in a model developed for Grand Teton National Park.
Dorgan has said for months he's frustrated at the park's lack of common sense. He said he took this step because it appears the park service will not yield on the issue.
The park has delayed announcing its preferred method for removing elk without explaining more than that the plan was being "briefed" in Washington.
"I would expect them to withhold the alterative because this is what it will be," Dorgan said. "They might be a bit upset with this, but they've been meeting themselves coming and going. The law will overcome whatever else they will be doing."
Park superintendent Valerie Naylor, when asked Friday about the bill's effect on the park's plan, said, "Our alternative is still being reviewed in Washington. I don't have any further information."
Roger Rostvet, deputy director of the state Game and Fish Department, said the bill provides an elk reduction method long promoted by his department.
Rostvet said the department's offer to recruit, train and organize public hunters to shoot the park's elk still stands.
"I think it's real beneficial for sportsmen in North Dakota. It would be done discreetly within a certain time of year. You could remove a lot of animals in a real low-key way," he said.
The park has been stuck with a burgeoning elk population since an old relocation program was halted because of threat of chronic wasting disease.
Now it has about 900 and needs to reduce the number to about 200 in order to manage the population for the next 15 years.
It released a draft of six alternatives six months ago and planned to announce the preferred alterative in May and initiate whatever plan it chose starting next year.
None of the options allow public hunters to shoot and keep the elk meat because of a prohibition against hunting in a national park, Naylor has said.
Dorgan said using an exemption created for the Grand Tetons will prevent bumping up against hunting provisions.
"This is allowed for a very specific need," he said.
Rostvet said there are problems with overgrown elk populations in many national parks. He said their total protection in ecosystems that lack natural predators requires a need to cull their numbers.
The park started working on a solution in 2002 and released a draft of six options in an Environmental Impact Statement six months ago.
The options called for killing as many as 1,500 of them over five years, with costs ranging from $1 million to $2 million and donating all the meat to charity.
Alternatives include using park rangers, or agents to kill the animals; euthanasia after a round up; killing about one-third of the animals to test for chronic wasting disease and than translocating others; or using helicopters to haze the animals outside the park for public hunting.
Rostvet said running the animals outside park boundaries would only have moved the problem onto park neighbors.bill trumps park's alterative
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