Grazing Elk

Grazing Elk, originally uploaded by soundman2006.

It seems that there are too many elk in Rocky Mountain National Park. The park service is thinking about culling them.

But arriving at a population-control solution has been a messy process. Public hearings last year about proposed alternatives, including reintroducing wolves and reintroducing hunting by humans, were fractious and divisive.

A park biologist who led a management study of the elk, Therese Johnson, said in an interview that even with the plan in place, it was still uncertain how many animals might have to be killed in any year.

Ms. Johnson said that for several reasons, the park’s elk population had recently fallen a bit. About 700 were killed by hunters outside the park last year, one of the highest numbers in years. And more of the animals appear to be spending time in forest areas outside park boundaries.

She said that if the trend continued, there might be years when no animals needed to be killed. She also emphasized that the culling program would be scientifically based. The shooting would be done in winter, she said, when there are few visitors, with a goal of mimicking as much as possible how natural predators like wolves would reduce a herd, by taking out the old, the weak and the ill.

It sounds reasonable but I just do not trust the government with Bush as president.