I hate to disappoint Mike Garrity of Alliance for the Wild Rockies, but elk love clearcuts, for the simple reason that they love to eat, and closed canopy forests produce very little of what they love to eat – grass. Elk, like cattle, are grazers, and when an elk herd finds a great stash of grass, they are like lawnmowers.
The biggest clearcut in American history was the Mt. St. Helens volcanic eruption, and the resident elk herd numbers exploded, shortly thereafter. I know; I was there.
There was a comical event near the city of Bend, Oregon in the late 1980’s. An enterprising landowner decided to clearcut 18 acres of his mixed conifer forest and plant it with alfalfa. One day, the local elk herd stumbled onto it and wiped it out in a matter of days. Fortunately for him, Oregon maintained a program to compensate landowners for wildlife damage, and not only paid him for his loss, but paid the bill for him to build an elk-proof fence. Montana should consider such a program. I know ranchers up Willow Creek Road, east of Corvallis, who sustain serious damage to their fields and fences, yearly. Such a program would improve the relationship between ranchers and wildlife advocates.
Jack Ward Thomas, former Region 1 Forester and Chief of the Forest Service, produced an awesome guide for managing timber for the benefit of wildlife called “Wildlife Habitats in a Managed Forest,” in 1979. I used it to design timber sales for many years – it was my Forester’s “Bible.” The result of state-of-the-art research in the Blue Mountains of eastern Oregon, it concluded that the optimum elk habitat ratio of cover to forage was 40/60, when distributed correctly. That means that in a 100 acre setting, 40 acres should be cover (both hiding and thermal) and 60 acres should be in forage (clearcuts, or approximating clearcuts),
So Mike, before you once again decide to humiliate our junior Congressman Zinke for not knowing that the spotted owl lives west of the Cascades (I think his formative years were spent doing other things, like protecting us from murderous thugs), you should educate yourself on the finer points of elk biology.
Once again, I will state: I am a registered Democrat and a member of an environmental organization named Bitterrooters for Planning. I have personal friends who belong to Friends of the Bitterroot. I would never question their motives. I disagree with Congressman Zinke on many issues, but when it comes to the health of the forests in the Northern Rockies, he is right on. We must act. There is not a minute to waste.
Chris Linkenhoker
Corvallis