Natural Resources moves on marauding elk

Monday, January 10, 2011

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

Winnie Kuno is heartened the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources has Ok’d a recreational hunt for the elk herd in the Bancroft-North Hastings area where she lives.

But she remains concerned that the ministry will tightly limit the number of tags it will make available to hunters next fall. “How, in the name of God, would they get rid of the elk if they only have a few tags out?”

The ministry announced the hunt last week, as well as a policy that will allow farmers to take measures to remove the elk from their properties.

Kuno, who lives with her husband Allan on a farm in Carlow/Mayo Township in Hastings County, says the animals have been a problem for their farm operation since introduced a decade ago. The Kunos are among several farmers in the area who have complained about the damage from the elk on their operations.

Allan Kuno says the first year the elk arrived; he cut down his grain crop right after haying. There was no point leaving it to combine, he says. A herd of 22 elk “kept coming into it.”

Each year since, the animals have returned. “We were pretty well put out of business with them,” says Allan. The couple, in their 70s, turned part of their property over to their daughter who maintains a small herd of cattle. She has to buy grain rather than grow it because of the elk, says Winnie.

Winnie wonders why the province doesn’t just move the herd.

“I’ve tried to tell them that in the winter time when the snow is on is the time for that same truck that brought them here round them up in a pen and move them somewhere else,” she says. “But nobody will listen.”

Jolanta Kowalski, a spokesperson for the ministry says there are about 470 animals around Bancroft. She says the ministry decided to allow the hunt because the herd had flourished and was growing “at a healthy rate” since it was established. The hunt “will be carefully harmonized” so the population remains sustainable. Ministry biologists will determine the number of tags and licences to be issued after they complete a survey of the herd in March. The hunt will target both cows and bulls. Applications for licences will be available in the spring. The hunting period will begin on the third Monday in September and last a week.

Kowalski says the ministry was aware of farmers’ concerns both in the area and in Toronto. “Absolutely I think that their concerns were relevant to what we were doing,” she says.

The ministry says elk were being “re-introduced” to the area. Farmers assert elk were never native to northern Hastings County.
 
The Bancroft herd is the only one of four within the province to which the hunt will apply. The other herds, located in Nipissing-French River, Lake of the Woods and Lake Huron’s north shore, are not doing as well, Kowalski says.

Moving the herd is problematic. Kowalski says she spoke to “a couple of our experts and they said there was a possibility of disease transmission to wildlife and domestic stock as we move from one area to another.” Moving problem animals might just make a problem for someone else and the cost would be quite high, she adds. There’s also the chance of stragglers left behind repopulating the area.

Bette Jean Crews, president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, praised the provincial government for its decision to allow the hunt and for introducing the elk control permits ahead of the hunt. “It’s obviously taking until next fall to get the hunt in place and farmers just could not wait one more year,” says Crews, who notes that the Federation has been trying to persuade the government to address the problem for the past two years.

Released last week, the policy adds American elk “to the list of species that can be harassed captured or killed in accordance with authorization from the Ministry of Natural Resources.” Permission to kill the animals will be given “where evidence indicates that elk are causing significant damage to agricultural property (i.e., existing crops, agricultural fencing, livestock, stored feed) or may be issued if significant damage is imminent in some specific circumstances.”

The policy takes effect immediately.

Crews notes that the policy is province-wide, which may be good news for farmers in the Algoma area who were also experiencing problems. In that instance, however, the ministry airlifted the animals into an area in Manitoba. She says she has heard some of the animals may have returned and is planning on contacting farmers in the area to determine if they were still a problem. BF