Farmers fed up with elk

Friday, March 27, 2009

© AgMedia Inc.

by TREENA HEIN

A group of about 50 Bancroft-area farmers and landowners are meeting with Ottawa lawyer Donald Good in early April to plan legal action against the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources over crop and feed damage caused by reintroduced elk.

Group member Dave Parks, who farms grain and beef with his wife, Penny, northeast of Bancroft, says they have been advised by their lawyer not to disclose details of their meeting over concerns that the ministry will send a representative in secret. According to a published report, the meeting will be held April 3.

Parks says they may sue for past damage to crops and feed caused by elk and/or have elk placed under the Nuisance Wildlife Provision Act, so the animals can be shot. They may also pursue a legalized hunt, which the ministry is considering among other management options.

In 2008, Parks lost 10 acres of grain to the animals. This was despite the ministry’s installation of an electric fence around his grain and Park’s use of dogs twice a day for several weeks to drive the animals away.

“I’ve been handed a problem that didn’t exist before,” says Parks. “These animals have enormous appetites.”

He believes legal action may be required to achieve a solution, because “when you are running elk off your property with dogs, the situation has the potential to turn neighbour against neighbour.”

The ministry has received about six complaints about elk in the Bancroft area. Vince Ewing, the ministry’s Bancroft district manager, says that an elk management plan is being created.

“The problems we’re experiencing are really isolated in a small area of our district,” says Ewing. “We try to maintain an open dialogue (with property owners) and get input towards finding a solution.”

Electric fences, high fences, and scaring them off with dogs, noise makers and predator calls have all been tried with some success to prevent crop and feed damage from the local elk have been tried with some success, notes Ewing.
 
Hunting and settlement eliminated Ontario’s elk population over 100 years ago. The Bancroft area is among four locations where the ministry has reintroduced the animals (Nipissing-French River, Lake of the Woods and Lake Huron’s north shore are the others). From 2000 to 2001, 120 elk were relocated to the Bancroft area from Elk Island National Park in Alberta. The ministry estimates the area now has between 300 and 400 animals; a provincial estimate is forthcoming.   

Dale Ketcheson, president of the Hastings County Federation of Agriculture, says if the ministry had assessed the reintroduction of the animals “correctly in the first place, the elk would never have been brought here. Elk are not a woodland animal, they are a plains animal. Farms are a natural habitat.”

“It’s a very serious situation for the people in the immediate area and will be a problem in the larger area as we go forward,” he says.

Ketcheson would like the animals removed, but admits that may not be realistic. “We’d like the MNR to at least put in proper fencing and pay for some of the crop damages and for ruined stored feed as well,” he says. ”We’d like the MNR to take responsibility for its mistakes.”

When asked about the degree of ministry accountability for crop and feed damage caused by elk, Ewing says “I wouldn’t want to say that it’s exclusively the ministry’s responsibility.” He adds “we do sympathize with the property owners.” BF