NATHAN BROWN
The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has announced more than $200,000 in grants it is giving out in Idaho this summer, including one to treat weed infestations in elk habitat in Camas County and one to help fund the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s efforts to better document the state’s wolf population, including finding undocumented packs.
The pro-hunting conservation group is also giving an “elk education trunk” — a kit with lesson plans, books, antlers, skulls and other materials — to Kimberly Elementary School in Kimberly.
Idaho wildlife officials estimated early this year that there are about 1,000 wolves in the state, although the number of wolves that have been documented is several hundred fewer, since this includes wolves believed to live in packs in remote areas that haven’t been documented.
The federal government is monitoring Idaho’s wolf population until May 2016. The state needs to document at least 150 wolves and 15 breeding pairs to avoid their being relisted as an endangered species.
The Elk Foundation is giving Fish and Game $50,000 to hire a wolf tracking expert to help find non-documented packs, collar those packs in conjunction with a helicopter capture operation, and document mid-winter pack composition through aerial tracking and remote camera work, according to the foundation.
Idaho’s wolf-management policies, which include allowing hunting and trapping as well as a state-funded Wolf Depredation Control Board, have been politically controversial, and opposed by environmental groups such as the Center for Biological Diversity and the Defenders of Wildlife. The Elk Foundation, though, favors continued state management, and foundation head David Allen said the grant is meant to ensure it.
“We also know that wolves and other predators have a significant impact on elk in some parts of Idaho,” he said in a statement. “Funding for this project allows the state to better address predator populations by maintaining state control of wolf management.”
The Elk Foundation, Camas County and the Sawtooth National Forest are spending $22,000 together, said foundation spokesman Mark Holyoak, to treat 300 acres of weed infestations scattered across the Fairfield and Ketchum ranger districts.