SEQUIM — The Sequim herd of Roosevelt elk could become the Snow Creek herd, the Burnt Hill area herd or the enhanced southern herd.
In a three-hour meeting Thursday that resembled a verbal square dance, the Dungeness Elk Working Team eyed five elk-management alternatives, including relocation of the herd to Snow Creek, near Discovery Bay southeast of Sequim.
Jeremy Sage, wildlife biologist for the Point No Point Treaty Council, gave the elk team a PowerPoint presentation of the list of options.
The treaty council is a natural resource management arm of the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe, which co-manages the Dungeness elk herd with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.
In February, the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe dropped a bombshell, advocating moving the iconic animals to an as-yet-unknown location to save them from Sequim’s increasing urbanization.
Complicated? That’s why these elk summits are so lengthy.
But officials from the tribe, the state and the city of Sequim, local landowners, scientists and a farmer pressed on.
They gathered at Carrie Blake Park’s Guy Cole Convention Center to seek consensus on how to preserve a viable elk herd here.
Two options dismissed
The first option, Sage told the group, is to stick with the status quo.
But the group spent little time talking about that.
Nor did it discuss option No. 2, lethal removal of the elk north of U.S. Highway 101.
The other three alternatives provided the meat for the meeting.
They include moving the elk to Snow Creek, fencing them south of Burnt Hill or conducting a phased harvest of elk north of the highway while enhancing the herd south of it.