DISCOVERY BAY — An option intended to put far more distance between humans and hungry 1,200-pound elk would relocate the Sequim herd to the Snow Creek area in Jefferson County by spring 2008, a wildlife biologist close to the elk relocation project says.
“The site we’re looking at for a release site is on [Department of Natural Resources] property, up off Snow Creek,” said Jeremy Sage, the Point No Point Treaty Council’s wildlife biologist who has been involved in the issues surrounding the Sequim herd for more than a year.
Sage wrote this spring’s report for the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe on elk-management alternatives, which advocates moving the herd out of the eastern Sequim area.
The herd is eating farm crops as well as crossing into new housing developments.
Sage said the herd with between 60 and 70 elk — and 15-20 calves on the way this spring — is proposed to be moved to an area off Woods Road near Snow Creek.
Woods Road runs through Olympic National Forest and state Department of Natural Resources timber lands between Blyn and Quilcene.
The site would near the Jefferson-Clallam County line, but in Jefferson County and on DNR land, he said.
Trucking the herd
Moving the herd is one to two years away, said Sage, and would likely involve trucking the animals on Woods Road from Blyn.
The road runs up Jimmycomelately Creek, then east toward the Salmon and Snow Creek watersheds that drain into the head of Discovery Bay.
A team of state, tribal and Sequim-area officials chose the Dungeness Valley-to-Snow Creek relocation proposal over taking no action, lethal removal, gradually lethal removal and fencing the herd off south of U.S. Highway 101 near Burnt Hill, south of Sequim.