Panel to revisit plan to fence elk along U.S. 101
By Diane Urbani de la Paz, Peninsula Daily News
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Cost estimates of a fence for the herd are "daunting," said a biologist on the panel.
The Dungeness Elk Working Team, a panel of state, city and county officials and others interested in the herd's fate, will convene for a briefing at the Jamestown S'Klallam Tribal Center in Blyn at 1 p.m. Tuesday.
The state Department of Fish and Wildlife plans another elk-team briefing on July 25, followed by a public presentation of fence options on July 30, at Carrie Blake Park in Sequim. No time has been set yet.
The Dungeness herd, expected to increase to 80 animals as this calving season ends, was headed out of its habitat a while back.
In February 2006, the Jamestown S'Klallam tribe, co-manager of the herd, announced that development in and around Sequim had made the area hostile to the ungulates.
They should be relocated, tribal chairman Ron Allen said then, since subdivisions and big wildlife don't mix.
Also, the herd was causing considerable damage to farmland north of U.S. Highway 101.
Then, two summers ago, scores of elk lovers attended a public meeting hosted by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, the herd's other co-manager.
Many in the crowd called for a fence to keep the elk south of the highway, instead of trailers that would take the animals away, leaving only the metal elk at Sequim's entrances.
So for the first half of last year, the Dungeness Elk Working Team wrangled with the question of where to build an 8-foot-high barrier.
Last summer, the team came up with a handful of routes, including one that would run along the highway's edge from the 7 Cedars Casino to the Dungeness River, and others veering toward Happy Valley Road.
This Tuesday, a year and a few days after its last policy meeting, the elk team will reconvene and reconsider.
Fence routes, money
In his notice of the meeting, Fish and Wildlife Olympic region manager Jack Smith said the group will discuss "recent modifications" to last year's fence routes.
Smith wasn't available last week to talk about Tuesday's session.
But Tim Cullinan, the Point No Point Treaty Council's elk biologist, predicted that the discussion would be largely about money.
"I suspect it will be a briefing on the results of cost estimates for building the fence," Cullinan said Friday.
"When the estimates came back, they were rather daunting."
The department had figured the fence would cost roughly $2 million, Cullinan said.
But after state engineers and real estate analysts researched the routes, they found that private-property easements and road crossings would drive the price north of that.
So Fish and Wildlife "has tried to mix and match the [route] alternatives to bring us in under budget," Cullinan added.
"They've been trying to come up with some other alternatives that are hybrids" of the already proposed routes.
State money?
If and when the elk team settles on a fence route, state money for construction and maintenance will be another question.
Elk barriers have been built elsewhere in the Northwest, but with Washington's budget deficit and strained revenue streams, such a project may not be given priority in the 2009 Legislature.
Still, Cullinan and other elk advocates say, a fence is what's needed for the animals' survival.
"It's not something anybody wants to do, but we've run out of alternatives," he said.
"Sequim is growing so fast . . . as the pastures and meadows start to fill up with subdivisions, we're headed for a train wreck."
If the elk are left to browse on crops north of Highway 101, and as they wander into new housing tracts, the wildlife-versus-humans tension will worsen, he said.
"Most likely what will happen is people will start to demand that they either increase the hunting, until the herd is reduced where it's unsustainable, or they'll put pressure on the state to move the elk out."
There has been talk of fencing the animals out of Dungeness area farms, to keep them out of the hay and corn.
But Cullinan warned that if they're kept out of those fields, and more of the valley is given over to pavement and lawns, "it just gets harder for them to get enough to eat."
Sequim is the North Olympic Peninsula's fastest-growing city, with a 32 percent increase in its population since 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau estimate released this month.
It's still a little town with 5,951 residents, but with tens of millions of baby boomers soon to retire, the so-called Arizona of the Northwest could see quite a wave of house-hunters.
Sequim's elk struggle is not, of course, a rare thing, Cullinan said.
"There isn't any place in the entire West where you have that peaceful coexistence," of people and wildlife.
Valerie Holland, a member of the 10-year-old Sequim Elk Habitat Committee, agrees that a fence on the south side of the highway is the better solution — for animals and humans.
"People could still enjoy them," she said. "Relocating is such a trauma."
Holland used to watch the elk come into her yard on Bell Hill.
"I loved it," she said. "But I never see them anymore.
"You look around the world and see all these creatures that are dying," from tropical coral reefs to Arctic polar bears.
"I hope there's something we can do."
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Sequim-Dungeness Valley Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-681-2391 or diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
Last modified: July 12. 2008 9:00PM