by BETTER FARMING STAFF
Winnie Kuno is heartened the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources has Ok’d a recreational hunt for the elk herd in the Bancroft-North Hastings area where she lives.
But she remains concerned that the ministry will tightly limit the number of tags it will make available to hunters next fall. “How, in the name of God, would they get rid of the elk if they only have a few tags out?”
The ministry announced the hunt last week, as well as a policy that will allow farmers to take measures to remove the elk from their properties.
Kuno, who lives with her husband Allan on a farm in Carlow/Mayo Township in Hastings County, says the animals have been a problem for their farm operation since introduced a decade ago. The Kunos are among several farmers in the area who have complained about the damage from the elk on their operations.
Allan Kuno says the first year the elk arrived; he cut down his grain crop right after haying. There was no point leaving it to combine, he says. A herd of 22 elk “kept coming into it.”
Each year since, the animals have returned. “We were pretty well put out of business with them,” says Allan. The couple, in their 70s, turned part of their property over to their daughter who maintains a small herd of cattle. She has to buy grain rather than grow it because of the elk, says Winnie.
Winnie wonders why the province doesn’t just move the herd.
“I’ve tried to tell them that in the winter time when the snow is on is the time for that same truck that brought them here round them up in a pen and move them somewhere else,” she says. “But nobody will listen.”
Jolanta Kowalski, a spokesperson for the ministry says there are about 470 animals around Bancroft. She says the ministry decided to allow the hunt because the herd had flourished and was growing “at a healthy rate” since it was established. The hunt “will be carefully harmonized” so the population remains sustainable. Ministry biologists will determine the number of tags and licences to be issued after they complete a survey of the herd in March. The hunt will target both cows and bulls. Applications for licences will be available in the spring. The hunting period will begin on the third Monday in September and last a week.
Kowalski says the ministry was aware of farmers’ concerns both in the area and in Toronto. “Absolutely I think that their concerns were relevant to what we were doing,” she says.
The ministry says elk were being “re-introduced” to the area. Farmers assert elk were never native to northern Hastings County.
The Bancroft herd is the only one of four within the province to which the hunt will apply. The other herds, located in Nipissing-French River, Lake of the Woods and Lake Huron’s north shore, are not doing as well, Kowalski says.
Moving the herd is problematic. Kowalski says she spoke to “a couple of our experts and they said there was a possibility of disease transmission to wildlife and domestic stock as we move from one area to another.” Moving problem animals might just make a problem for someone else and the cost would be quite high, she adds. There’s also the chance of stragglers left behind repopulating the area.
Bette Jean Crews, president of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture, praised the provincial government for its decision to allow the hunt and for introducing the elk control permits ahead of the hunt. “It’s obviously taking until next fall to get the hunt in place and farmers just could not wait one more year,” says Crews, who notes that the Federation has been trying to persuade the government to address the problem for the past two years.
Released last week, the policy adds American elk “to the list of species that can be harassed captured or killed in accordance with authorization from the Ministry of Natural Resources.” Permission to kill the animals will be given “where evidence indicates that elk are causing significant damage to agricultural property (i.e., existing crops, agricultural fencing, livestock, stored feed) or may be issued if significant damage is imminent in some specific circumstances.”
The policy takes effect immediately.
Crews notes that the policy is province-wide, which may be good news for farmers in the Algoma area who were also experiencing problems. In that instance, however, the ministry airlifted the animals into an area in Manitoba. She says she has heard some of the animals may have returned and is planning on contacting farmers in the area to determine if they were still a problem. BF
Comments
On behalf of the North Hastings and Area Farmers and Landowners Association, let me concur with Mrs. Kuno's points and add this.
As long as people are led to believe that there are only 470 elk in this region, this development ( the hunt ) will be of little or no benefit to the farmers and landowners of this region. The 470 quoted is a number arrived at by Dr. Rick Rosatte, the MNR's own elk guru. If you were to read the release where that number originated you would see that it is an, out of thin air guess at best, and at worst, pure conjecture. It is a mathematically adjusted number arrived at by flying a certain grid pattern in a small part of the elk range and counting elk. I believe they saw less than 200. Then by estimating, Elk per square kilometer, and estimating their geographic spread, the population would be between 350 and 800,with a mathematically corrected number of 470, accurate to 90% 19 times out of 20, while that works fairly well with moose or deer, elk are a herding animal, where, the next valley over may contain another 150 animals.
We, the NHAFLA contend that the true population is far closer to 2000 than it is to 470. On my own farm,(in New Carlow ) we have watched the elk population rise from 8 in 2001, to over 120 in 2010.
We are being told that perhaps as few as 50 tags are to be issued. If that is the case, and all 50 were taken off of my farm ( which would never happen )I still am out of business because of elk
This hunt is a step in the right direction Minister Jeffrey, and we thank-you. Please do not insult the financially devastated landowners now by saying there are only 470 elk, and by issuing a paltry 50 tags.
Elson Ruddy, President
North Hastings and Area Farmers
And Landowners Association
I read this article with great interest. I find the "admitted" number of elk as advertised by the MNR to be unbelievably low. According to the Bancroft Times in the fall of 2007, Dr. Rosatte and the MNR proudly said there were 500 elk in the North Hastings herd. Now, I have great difficulty in believing that the herd size has actually decreased in the last 3 years. As Mr. Ruddy says, the average elk herd increases at an average of 24 to 33% per annum. If this is the case, then the herd in North Hastings has to be more along the lines of 1000 to 1500 animals by now (and 2000 by next fall). When the average number of 470 elk is used in articles such as this, that is what people remember. They do not know that the number is taken from only a small area that the elk actually roam over between HWY 7 and HWY 17 and they do not realize that the number is averaged between 390 and 766.
Rather than the permission for an elk hunt being headline news, for farmers your story should have been about the agricultural policy also included in the Elk Management Plan. As Bette Jean Crews says, that policy allows farmers to apply for permits to harrass or remove (kill) elk who are damaging their crops and fences or harrassing their livestock. If the farmers are lucky in North Hastings, a couple of hundred (minimum) tags should be issued with the assumption that 50% will be filled. The removal permits are more relevant to farmers trying to harvest their crops, preserve their fences and protect their livestock. The hunt is secondary and useless to the farmers until after their harvest.
Carol Counts
Maple Leaf, Ontario
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