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 March 25, 2008
President's Message
Over the past 10 years we have been working hard to preserve the Mount St. Helens Area. Our primary work has been with Elk, trying to increase habitat and reduce population.
To date we have spread thousands of pounds of grass seed, distributed tons of fertilizer and planted over six thousand trees.
All this has been accomplished with Washington State Department of Fish & Wildlife Grants, private donations, and countless volunteer hours.
Throughout all of this we have followed the direction of the WDFW and have seen little to no positive results. In fact we have seen a decline in habitat and an increase in elk mortality.
The overall health of the herd has also been on a steady decline. This has been confusing and frustration; it seemed no matter how hard we worked and no matter what we tried, we were not making progress.
Then I read “Playing God in Yellowstone -- The Destruction of America’s First National Park” by Alston Chase.
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Elk project aims to save animals from starvation
Excerpted from The Olympian
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."
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