20 n Fair Chase Summer 2011
Elk are one of the most popular game species in North
Healthy Forests
Restoration Act
Mike Wisdom and Marty Vavra
have provided valuable insight
on new approaches to elk
habitat management in
western Oregon and
Washington, and by inference
in much of the rest of elk
habitat in the West. This has
important implications for
maintaining and restoring
healthy fire-prone forests.
The Healthy Forests Initiative of 2002
and Healthy Forests Restoration Act of
2003 (P.L. 108-148) were implemented
by the U.S. Forest Service and BLM on
their fire-prone forests and rangelands
in the West to reduce hazardous fuels
contributing to increasing catastrophic
wildfires and to restore fire-adapted
ecosystems. Action was taken
following a landmark wildfire season in
2000 and dire predictions of future
recurrences based on an estimate of
about 190 million acres of federal forest
and rangeland in the lower forty-eight
States with a high risk of large-scale
insect or disease epidemics and
catastrophic fire due to deteriorating
ecosystem health and drought. Data
related to Wisdom’s and Vavra’s report
show that in drier (“eastside”) forest
and rangeland types, the same
conditions contributing to increased
risks of insect and disease and
catastrophic wildfire outbreaks (too
much of the wrong kind of plants) are
also contributing to declining elk
habitat quality (low nutrition quality for
cows on summer range.) Improvement
of elk habitat quality and restoration of
forests and rangelands in these drier
ecosystems appear to be compatible
and complementary if not compelling
goals. We look forward to future
reports from Mike and Marty to provide
more detail on this important
relationship.
America. Their widespread occurrence on public lands provides a
myriad of public hunting and viewing opportunities. Trophy hunts
are now offered for bull elk in every state in the West, and much of
this trophy hunting occurs on public lands. But all is not well with
elk on public lands. In the past, By Michael Wisdom and
elk nutrition on summer range
Martin Vavra
Ungulate Scientists for the USDA Forest Service
was sustained on public forests by Pacific Northwest Research Station
extensive timber harvest, which Photos provided by authors
opened up forest canopies. The open canopy allowed full sunlight
penetration to ground level, in turn promoting vigorous growth of
grasses, forbs, and shrubs that established a nutritionally-rich forage
base essential to sustaining healthy elk populations.
Today, following two decades of limited timber harvest on many federal forests,
the abundance of high-quality forage for elk
has declined. Federal forest managers scramble to prevent even the smallest forest
meadows from being overwhelmed by tree
invasion and to maintain their forage productivity, but it is a never-ending battle
without active silviculture on the larger areas
of forestlands. In response, elk have increasingly sought highly nutritious forage on
private forestlands in areas where better
forage has been maintained through active
timber harvest. Or, alternatively, elk have
increasingly sought higher quality forage
provided by agricultural lands adjacent to
federal forest habitats.
Management concerns expressed
about elk spending more time on private
lands, coupled with the potential for reduced
hunting opportunities on federal forests recently provided a strong impetus for new
thinking about elk and forest management.
These concerns were exemplified by the situation in western Oregon and western
Washington. During the 1960s and 1970s,
researchers such as Charles Trainer and James
Harper, then of the Oregon Department of
Fish and Wildlife, documented low pregnancy
rates, low body fat, and low calf production
in westside elk herds. Trainer’s and Harper’s
research concluded that the low productivity
of westside elk herds was directly related to
the low quality of available forage, a characteristic of the unproductive soils of western
Oregon and Washington, which are inherently low in nitrogen, calcium, and other
nutrients essential to production of nutritious
elk forage. Trainer and Harper also reported
that the nutritional deficiencies of greatest
consequence to elk reproduction and productivity occurred during summer, when
lactating females need high-quality forage to
successfully rear calves, and when yearlings
require high-quality forage for growth and
development.
Strangely enough, most of the lush
understory vegetation present in westside
landscapes is unpalatable to elk, and in some
cases contains compounds that actually suppress digestion if consumed. The low nutrition
levels of the westside, however, appeared to
be offset by extensive timber harvest, which
provided a more nutritious forage base on
forests throughout the region during the
1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Since then, timber
harvest has been halted on most federal forests in the region, leading to the widespread
view that elk nutrition has declined dramatically in the absence of continued maintenance
of open-canopy, early-seral forests. In addition, private forest owners often accelerate
the return of tree cover after timber harvest,
shortening the time period in which nutritious forage is available on those lands.
Attention to the topic of declining
forage conditions for elk on federal forests
led to new nutrition research for the species
in the westside region in the early 2000s. The
research was initiated by John and Rachel
Cook, elk nutrition scientists with the National Council for Air and Stream
Improvement (NCASI). To understand and
quantify the relation between forest management practices and forage conditions, the
Cooks used tame elk to estimate the quality
of elk diets under a wide variety of forest
timber practices and associated conditions.
Tame elk, reared from birth by the Cooks at
the USDA Forest Service Starkey Experimental Forest and Range near La Grande,
Oregon, provided an essential mechanism
for the diet work. By following the tame elk
over a series of grazing trials in each forest
condition (e.g., young stands follow clearcutting, mid-age pole stands, mature stands,
Fair Chase Summer 2011 n 21
Tame Elk in
Grazing Trial
Westside Seral Stages
GPS Collared Elk
old-growth stands, etc.), the Cooks were able
to identify the forage species selected by the
elk, and estimate the amount of each forage
species eaten. Additional samples of the selected forage species in the elk diets were
subsequently analyzed for nutritional quality
through laboratory work.
Results from the grazing trials and
diet quality analyses were dramatic and obvious. Open-canopy forests established
immediately after timber harvest, particularly
as a result of clear-cutting, resulted in “earlyseral” forest conditions that provided elk with
digestible energy that exceeded their daily
maintenance needs. All other closedcanopy forests, including old-growth, did
not provide adequate amounts of highquality forage sufficient for elk to
maintain body fat during summer, a critical time period for elk to accumulate body
fat needed for reproduction and survival.
“We were astounded at the consistently
low quality of available forage under
closed-canopy forest conditions in western Oregon and Washington,” said John
Cook. “Our findings clearly pointed to
the importance of the grass-forb-deciduous shrub stage of succession, following
timber harvest, as a critical source of
nutrition for elk.”
The elk nutrition findings of John and
Rachel Cook prompted discussions about
new ways of evaluating and managing elk
habitat, and the need for new evaluation tools
to reflect the new thinking. An earlier elk
habitat evaluation model, developed for the
westside in the mid-1980s, originally considered elk nutrition as one of four model
components, but the nutrition component
was ignored by model users. In addition, the
model contained a cover component that
was later determined to be outdated, based
on thermal cover research conducted by the
Cooks in the 1990s.
Bull elk on U.S. Forest Service land
Discussions about the need for new
modeling approaches, based on the new nutrition research, were prompted by the leadership
of the Boone and Crockett Club and Rocky
Mountain Elk Foundation. Said Steve Mealey,
vice president of conservation and board
member of the Boone and Crockett Club,
“Our field visits to national forests in western
Oregon clearly showed that the nutritional
needs of elk in the region were not being met
with current forest management practices,
and that land use plans on national forests
contained little direction for managing habitat for elk nutrition.”
Melissa Simpson, then the undersecretary of
agriculture for natural resources, and Jim
Caswell, then the director of the Bureau of
Land Management, to further identify funding needs and sources. As a result of these
efforts, over 20 scientists, representing federal,
state, private, university, and tribal partners,
began work in 2009 to synthesize and model
the findings of the Cooks’ nutrition research
in combination with analysis of radio-telemetry data collected during the 1990s and
2000s on wild elk from seven different study
areas across western Oregon and Washington.
Radio-telemetry data on elk were provided
from the seven study areas by the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe, Lower Elwha
Klallam Tribe, Makah Nation, Quileute
Tribe, Sauk-Suiattle Tribe, and Oregon
State University.
The synthesis and modeling work
had two main objectives: (1) to predict
and map elk nutrition across the entire
region in relation to all management
conditions, encompassing all land ownership areas; and (2) to integrate the
nutrition predictions with all other factors that affect elk use of habitat across
the region. To meet these objectives, the
synthesis and modeling of elk nutrition
and radio-telemetry data posed a daunting
task that had not been attempted before for
elk or other species that range over vast areas.
None of the data sets had been collected for such a synthesis, requiring a
tremendous amount of time to understand,
edit, and integrate the data. Moreover, these
data sets required the estimation and mapping
of over 50 different types of environmental
characteristics, such as slope, aspect, vegetation types, and forest conditions. Such maps
had to be developed for vast areas, encompassing many millions of acres of western
Oregon and western Washington. And finally, the many radio-telemetry data sets on
Management concerns expressed
about elk spending more time on
private lands, coupled with the
potential for reduced hunting
opportunities on federal forests
recently provided a strong
impetus for new thinking about
elk and forest management.
22 n Fair Chase Summer 2011
Mealey and Bob Model, past Boone
and Crockett Club president and Club board
member, joined with Jack Blackwell, then
vice president of lands and conservation at
the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, to
organize a series of meetings with state and
federal agencies to find funding sources for
the new modeling work. Mealey, Model, and
Blackwell then facilitated the development
of a study plan and grant proposals that led
to formation of a team of scientists to initiate
the new modeling work. The trio further
collaborated on the details of the proposed
work with Boone and Crockett Club members
wild elk across the region had to be evaluated
to assess how well the data could be used to
meet objectives.
The synthesis and modeling work focused on analyzing the nutrition predictions
with the telemetry data, to understand how
well elk used areas of highest nutrition, and
what other factors, such as motorized access,
might inhibit elk use of areas of high nutrition.
The modeling work was recently completed,
with results that are considered remarkable
by elk scientists. In each of the seven study
areas where telemetry data were evaluated, elk
consistently selected for areas of highest nutrition, particularly when such areas were farther
from public roads, on flatter ground, and closer
to areas near cover. Remarkably, of over 20
models tested, the same habitat-use model
consistently produced the most accurate predictions of elk use across all study areas.
The elk nutrition and habitat-use
models are now available for management
applications. Early uses by federal, state, private, and tribal management partners appear
extremely promising in terms of the potential
benefits for management. For the first time,
nutritional conditions for elk can be accurately
mapped across vast areas, and the probability
that elk will use these nutritional conditions
can be estimated with the habitat-use model
that considers nutrition in concert with other
major factors that affect elk use. Given the
mixed land ownerships in most areas of the
region, of particular benefit is the capability
to map elk nutrition and habitat use across
multiple land ownerships to compare and
contrast the probabilities of elk use on private
and public lands. Such evaluations allow all
landowners, in partnership with state wildlife
agencies and conservation groups like Boone
and Crockett Club, to discuss and devise ways
to effectively manage elk distributions across
land ownerships to meet overall objectives for
nutrition, population productivity, viewing,
and hunting.
The developed models predict a need
for more early-successional habitats for optimum maintenance of elk herds. Interestingly,
a recent article by several noted forest ecologists in the journal Frontiers in Ecology has
pointed out the value of early-successional
ecosystems that occur following disturbance.
These systems were described as providing
resources that attract and sustain high species
diversity, complex food webs, large nutrient
fluxes, and high spatial and structural diversity. The authors concluded that where
maintenance of biodiversity is an objective,
the importance and value of these earlysuccession ecosystems are underappreciated.
The challenge to managers is to develop
strategies that effectively provide the structure
and composition of these early-succession
habitats. Providing improved habitat for elk
may, in fact, improve the overall ecological
health of westside landscapes.
Scientists involved with this new elk
modeling would like to expand their approaches to other areas of the western United
States for benefit of elk, landowners, and the
hunting public. These new modeling approaches also are proposed for development
of new evaluation tools for mule deer. Whether this type of innovative work for benefit of
elk, mule deer, and other big game species
can be sustained depends largely on future
support for continued big game research. The
key to such future work will be maintaining
strong partnerships among federal and state
agencies, conservation and hunting organizations, universities, private industry, and tribal
nations, as demonstrated by the elk modeling
work in western Oregon and Washington. n
Drs. Michael Wisdom and Martin
Vavra are ungulate scientists with the
USDA Forest Service Pacific Northwest
Research Station in La Grande, Oregon.
They have conducted long-term research
on a wide variety of land use issues
related to elk, mule deer, and cattle
management on forests and rangelands
of the western U.S.
Fair Chase Summer 2011 n 23