Colorado Wildlife Commission Thinks RMNP Plan Too Vague
Posted by Tom Remington on December 15, 2007
On Wednesday I told you about the Rocky Mountain National Park’s plan to manage elk. I also told you that the way the plan was proposed it said that the use of volunteer hunters to cull the elk herd would be only if park officials needed the extra help.
In what is looking like a great political maneuver to ward off the sensible thinkers in dealing with too many elk in and around the Rocky Mountain National Park, officials there, in revealing the elk management plan, say they will use “qualified” volunteer hunters to assist in culling the elk. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that those “authorized agents” will be used only if needed to help the park employees and the hired guns. All the meat, once tested for chronic wasting disease, will either be left to rot or given to Indian tribes and non-profits.
It seems that the Colorado Wildlife Commission has similar thoughts.
“The biggest problem I have is that there’s sort of a litany of items that are available according to the (plan),” said Tom Burke, chairman of the Colorado Wildlife Commission, which along with the Colorado Division of Wildlife criticized the plan. “But we don’t think they go far enough in actually saying what they’re going to do.”
This refers to what I described as the political maneuvering in the wording that would not require the park to do anything in managing the elk herd it didn’t want to do. From what I can gather, it’s so vague and wide open, park officials can import wolves if they want to.
Wildlife officials are saying that through this entire process, the efforts of the DOW and representatives to the U.S. Congress were to find ways in which qualified volunteers could be used at virtually no cost to taxpayers to achieve the goals of the park.
“I think our big concern is that through this whole process, we’ve asked and encouraged them to use qualified volunteers to remove whatever number of elk is appropriate,” Burke said. “But they haven’t said, ‘Yes, this is what we’re going to do.’ We’re just concerned that they have not defined exactly how they’re going to deal with the issue.”
Park officials say they’ll work out the details of the plan later and are stating that they believe the most cost-effective plan for culling the elk is the use of park employees. I just don’t see how that can be more cost-effective than bringing in volunteers. Elk hunters would be willing to pay a fee for the opportunity in many cases.
I still believe this is nothing more than a case of park officials being anti-hunting and that they are determined to do it their way. Have they forgotten who owns the park, the wildlife in it and pays their salaries? Evidently.
Tom Remington
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[...] Colorado Wildlife Commission Thinks RMNP Plan Too Vague On Wednesday I told you about the Rocky Mountain National Park’s plan to manage elk. I also told you that the way the plan was proposed it said that the use of volunteer hunters to cull the elk herd would be only if park officials needed the extra help. [...]
December 16th, 2007 at 4:05 pm