SEQUIM — When the public was given time to talk about elk Tuesday night, people didn’t hold back.
They expressed love, admiration — and something that could only be called outrage toward the idea of moving the Dungeness herd away from them.
“We heard the community loud and clear,” said Sue Patnude, a state Fish and Wildlife Department regional director.
Patnude facilitated Tuesday’s presentation of the elk-relocation proposal that would take the herd to the South Olympic Peninsula.
More than 100 people crowded into the Guy Cole Convention Center in Sequim’s Carrie Blake Park.
“We heard that people don’t want them moved,” Patnude said Wednesday.
“After last night, we’re holding internal discussions” on whether to go ahead with relocation.
Patnude added that the department will continue to accept written input from the public through Sept. 30.
Fish and Wildlife and the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe co-manage the Dungeness herd of some 76 animals, which has damaged crops on local farms and alarmed some residents who’ve seen them near Sequim’s burgeoning subdivisions.
Over the past seven months the co-managers have explored many elk-management options.
They had settled on relocation as their “preferred alternative.”
Until Tuesday night.
“The long term health of the herd is at stake,” Jamestown tribal councilman Kurt Grinnell said.
In recent years, the elk have stayed on and near farm fields north of U.S. Highway 101 instead of following natural migration paths, so they don’t mix with other herds.
“The longer the wait, the worse off they will be,” Grinnell said.
“They won’t know how to forage . . . and as people move in, their range gets smaller.”
Sequim Mayor Walt Schubert issued a short statement on the city’s position.
“Elk and people do not mix,” he said.
“I pledge my support . . . [to] any reasonable elk plan that specifies relocation outside the city limits and urban growth area.
“Millions of dollars of damage is done each year requiring millions of dollars of our tax dollars to cover the damage,” he continued.