The killing of almost 80 elk on Oregon’s North Coast became a flashpoint for wildlife conservation and land management last year.
However, a quieter conflict with the iconic ungulates has been simmering for decades in Oregon’s Hood River Valley, about 60 miles east of Portland.
The local tree fruit industry has long been a regional powerhouse. More than 10,000 acres alone are devoted to growing pears.
Interest in hiking, mountain biking and other outdoor recreational activities has exploded in recent years, pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the local economy.
But like many other communities in the western United States, the surge in activity has pushed elk from their traditional habitat.
Elk have identified orchards and private land in the valley as safe havens, according to a dozen interviews with biologists and local residents.
Once known to migrate between the valley and high-elevation habitat on the flanks of Mount Hood, some herds now seem to live on the valley floor year-round, where they gorge on fruit trees and thwart farmers’ attempts to keep them out.
Elk are skittish and typically avoid humans.
But in orchards, even gunfire fails to spook them, hunters say. Farmers have erected expensive fences throughout the valley to keep out deer and elk in recent years.
“It’s just a low, underlying conflict,” said Andrew Meyers, an Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist.
Orchardists, bikers, hikers
Meyers joined the agency in 2020 and, like his predecessors, is trying to raise tolerance for elk among frustrated residents and farmers.
The agency has helped pay for some fencing, let farmers harass herds and even approved special hunts.
Each approach has its costs, and Meyers says there’s no silver bullet.
Meanwhile, the agency isn’t pursuing plans to shape a habitat corridor for elk in the foothills above the valley, an idea its biologists floated four years ago.
But Meyers is bringing a new perspective to the management of Hood River County’s wildly popular recreational trails.
That could benefit an elk herd that’s cut off from nearby wilderness by throngs of mountain bikers.
County officials are thinking more deeply about the impacts of trail expansions and busy roads on elk and other big game on the county’s 30,000-acre tree farm.
The sprawl of land is primarily managed for timber harvesting — and, recently, a carbon-sequestration project.
The public forest would be prime elk habitat if it weren’t also home to Post Canyon, one of the most popular mountain biking areas in the state.
County Forester Doug Thiesies said planners will identify what’s left of the usable big-game habitat in the county forest with Meyers’ help.
The county may concentrate new trails near existing paths and busy roads that elk and other species already avoid.
The approach could give elk more room to spread out and alleviate their impacts in the valley, while benefiting the public forest’s human users by opening up new opportunities for trail and exchanges, Thiesies said.
Although the conversations are informal and only in early stages, “it’s definitely a new perspective,” he said.
Post Canyon
Elk aren’t new to the Hood River Valley, and neither is the tension around them.
Situated between the Columbia River Gorge and Mount Hood, rows of pears and apple orchards appear to stretch forever across the valley floor. The valley is bordered by forested land that sweeps up into Mount Hood and federally designated wilderness.
In 2017, as the Department of Fish and Wildlife received more and more complaints about elk, residents banded together to help fund an agency-led collaring study.
Researchers found that the local elk population was indeed growing, as many locals had suspected.
The report also found that certain elk herds traveled in small ranges, restricted by agriculture, development and recreation.
“They don’t really leave the valley, is what you get from that,” Meyers said.
Not much has changed since that study wrapped up in 2020.
One modest herd of elk is still particularly hemmed in by recreation activity. The group doesn’t stray far from a swath of privately owned orchard and timberland near Post Canyon.
Most of Post Canyon is on public land managed by the Hood River County forestry department. Elk enjoy wide-open glades that provide forage, and the county’s timber harvesting makes for excellent habitat.
Unfortunately for elk and other big game, this area is abuzz with human activity. Scientists have long known that elk avoid trafficked areas.
“They’re perfectly happy if they never see anybody,” Thiesies said.
Wildlife post-COVID
Nationally, there’s mounting concern among recreation advocates and conservationists that the post-COVID outdoor boom is degrading wildlife habitat, particularly for elk.
In Colorado, home to the world’s largest population of elk, 40 percent of elk habitat is impacted by trail use and roads, according to a conservationist group’s analysis.
“This is something that people are looking into everywhere,” said Tara Mills, co-executive director of the nonprofit advocacy group Thrive Hood River, which protects farmland and wildlife habitat. “The more people you have, the more impact you’re going to have on wildlife.”
Thiesies said the county is engaging with local bikers, equestrians and ATV drivers through its recreation trail committee.
The Hood River Area Trail Stewards, a mountain biking association that established the Post Canyon network, declined requests for an interview.
In an email, the group said “the local trail system contributes to the quality of life and great sense of community here in the valley, and outdoor recreation is vital to community support for conservation.”
Elk, orchardists, damage tags
To produce pears and other tree fruit, local farmers grapple with international market swings, volatile weather exacerbated by climate change and inflation. Also on the list: bears, deer, gophers, mice and elk that have grown fond of irrigated grass and fruit trees.
Elk don’t rank particularly high among Jeff McNerney’s problems. The local orchardist and elk hunter grows pears, cherries, blueberries and apples on about 400 acres.
He said gophers will “annihilate” a block of young fruit trees. Deer browse new shoots, and cherries are beloved by area bears.
Elk cause trouble, too. McNerney said they plow through his fences and trap themselves in rows of orchards.
A friend of McNerney’s, fellow orchardist Randy Kiyokawa, said a herd of about 50 elk settled on his land for almost an entire winter.
He never quite figured out how to remove them. He lit firecrackers and obtained “damage tags” from the Department of Fish and Wildlife to facilitate a hunt of a small number.
It all hardly made a difference, he said, and the elk decimated a small apple crop that year.
“There was a hardly a flower in bloom-time that spring,” Kiyokawa said.
But McNerney and Kiyokawa don’t want to see local elk eradicated.
“They’re a beautiful part of the ecosystem out here, and it’s needed. But we do need to protect our livelihoods — the trees,” Kiyokawa said.
Meyers declined to provide Columbia Insight with data on the agency’s approval of elk killings on private land. In interviews, the biologist and several local elk hunters expected that number to be relatively small because the tactic hasn’t proven effective.
Jason Johnston, a local farmer and butcher, hunts elk on orchardists’ land when they receive the agency’s approval. He’s seen a big herd of elk move only a few hundred feet when one of their own is shot down.
“And I’m not joking on that. We’ve watched them just get up and move,” Johnston said.
He also admires elk and wants to see them thrive.
But Johnston is critical of the primary way farmers and Fish and Wildlife are dealing with nuisance elk: fencing them out.
Mills said orchardists have fenced off swaths of the valley in recent years for deer as well as elk — Kiyokawa among them.
Meyers said fencing is the only measure that directly helps farmers with problem herds. But he acknowledges that fences often push wildlife onto neighbors’ property.
The agency had dedicated funding to help farmers pay for fencing, but Meyers said it doesn’t have enough to meet the need.
“A lot of times, what we can give is advice,” he said.
Columbia Insight, based in Hood River, Oregon, is nonprofit news site focused on environmental issues of the Columbia River Basin.
