Preserving our elk habitats

[Devildog Denver]

#6517

Good morning and happy holidays to all! I hope you are as blessed during this season of joy as much as my family and I are. My question is what groups can I be supporting to help preserve our elk herds and habitat for my children and there children? I can’t say that I always agree with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation’s contributions and political affiliations. I’ve read some disturbing stand points that they have lobbied for and have decided that I don’t think their main interests are always for the elk and the everyday average public land elk hunter like myself. I may be wrong but would love a little more advise on the groups that need our support. If any one can help thank you and god bless. Happy holidays to all and good hunting!

[David Petersen]

#52169

Hi Drew — A great way to be thinking at this thoughtful time of year! I agree with you, sadly, re RMEF … a once very good idea gone badly wrong. Forget them. Frankly, the best way to protect public lands wildlife and hunting habitat is to become informed and active locally, since you live in the West where most of the action is. Write letters to elected officials, agency leads, newspapers, expressing your views and pointing out that you are a sportsman. Attend meetings and speak your piece. If that’s not possible, the top group on my list is Backcountry Hunters and Anglers because they/we work from the grassroots (as opposed to a fat staff of paid professionals) to limit the greatest threats to public lands habitat health, including ATV abuse and overuse (top item on the list!), sloppy and inappropriate energy development, habitat-fragmenting roads and motorized trails, and more. Another member on this website is currently working with BHA leaders to start a chapter in KS, and you could do the same in NM. If that’s not practical for you, join BHA and do what you can from home to help. Trout Unlimited, both national and state chapters, are also good friends to big game hunters in that they work to protect watersheds, and watersheds in the West are prime elk and other big game habitat, usually classified as roadless areas. (That is, not protected as wilderness, but not yet messed with with roads and development, so still naturally wild.) If I lived in MT I’d be supporting Vital Ground (in fact I just sent them a nice Christmas present and I live in CO), which operates much as RMEF did back when it was viable (and is headed by Gary Wolfe, former RMEF CEO), arranging conservation land trusts and buying small key parcels of threatened grizzly habitat, and when you protect the habitat of the keystone species in any area, you are protecting habitat for all wildlife and us too. There are other good groups (Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife is NOT among these, beware) that deserve our support. Feel free to attend our annual CO BHA chapter rendezvous next June (near Durango) to get a feel for how we operate so successfully. No matter where we live in America, the West is the future of old-style, traditional, fair-chase hunting in America, and thus worth supporting. Bravo!

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