MONTANA In the Fisher River watershed of northwest Montana, spotted knapweed and common St. John’s wort have established themselves on critical elk winter range, limiting forage quality and quantity. To help remedy this, the Elk Foundation and its partners are taking action. Through focused weed spraying, project managers treated almost 40 miles of road corridors where weeds have spread. The Lincoln County Weed District provided oversight for the project, which included state, national forest and Plum Creek Timber Company lands. (Elk Foundation project photo)

CALIFORNIA
To better determine tule elk numbers and habitat use in the Peach Tree Valley near King City, the Elk Foundation helped fund a California Department of Fish and Game study to affix GPS radio collars to eight elk. This should speed the Department’s ability to conduct aerial population surveys and locate different sub‑groups. Plans to establish a new hunting boundary are underway, and the new information will aid development of a suitable harvest strategy.

COLORADO
The essential role that private landowners play in wildlife conservation was proven once again as Colorado’s Tri Lazy W Ranch partnered with the Elk Foundation to fund installation of a 38,000-gallon water tank and pipeline system to provide water for elk and deer on state-owned winter range in Chaffee County. The area is open to public hunting, but water is scarce, which has led wildlife and livestock to overgraze those areas surrounding water sources. The new tank will provide water to an underused area and give riparian zones a chance to recover. The Tri Lazy W is also working with both the state and Forest Service to treat beetle infestations. Such efforts helped earn the ranch the “Excellence in Range Conservation” award from the Society of Range Management.

IDAHO
Black timber may be one of the best places to find elk during the hunting season, but the rest of the year they depend on a variety of other habitats to make a living, with none perhaps more important than healthy aspen stands. In upper Fall Creek, eight miles southwest of Swan Valley, the Elk Foundation is helping fund a multi-year project to restore 4,200 acres of aspen in an important elk migration corridor. Project managers cut young conifers that are invading aspen stands, while leaving larger conifer stands without aspen untouched for security cover. They also plan to burn 800 acres this fall. The work should do much to improve forage conditions, especially as elk work to pile on fat for winter.

INDIANA
Through its state grants program, the Elk Foundation helped the Super Shooters 4-H Club in Georgetown purchase 12 compasses, topographic maps and instructional materials for the Floyd County Orienteering Clinic to teach 8- to 18-year-olds navigational skills.

OREGON Across the West, frequent wildfires once played a starring role in maintaining meadows within pine forests. In modern times, however, fire suppression has allowed conifers to overrun these grassy oases for wildlife. The Elk Foundation is fighting this threat on multiple fronts, including a recent project on a pair of meadows in the Willamette National Forest. At Chucksney Meadow in the McKenzie Ranger District and Grasshopper Meadow in the Middle Fork District, project managers removed small-diameter trees, burned 147 acres and seeded 104 acres with native grasses. (Elk Foundation project photo)

MINNESOTA
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and The University of Minnesota-Crookston campus are partnering to help ensure the future of our hunting heritage through a new Shooting Sports Program, partially funded through an Elk Foundation state grant. The program provides university students the opportunity to learn to shoot in a safe environment taught by skilled instructors, as well as to learn about deer biology and tracking. Federal Cartridge, Crookston Gun Club and the Polk County Deer Hunter’s Association also lent support.

NEBRASKA
In the state’s Pine Ridge region, a wildfire last year burned two miles of a fence built to exclude livestock from a key riparian area for wildlife along Ash Creek. Open to hunting and home to a thriving elk herd, the area has long been a focus of Elk Foundation conservation efforts. The RMEF granted $5,600 toward reconstructing the fence, which will allow the riparian area to regenerate with tree and shrub vegetation favored by elk as well as to stabilize stream banks for fish. Vehicles are prohibited in the area, so materials to build the fence were packed in by mule.

NEVADA
The White Pine Ridge south of Aspen Springs was once an aspen Garden of Eden, but due to its popularity with livestock, wild horses, elk and mule deer, the trees have been loved nearly to death. Aspen sprouts haven’t been able to grow before being browsed away, leaving the aging stands unable to regenerate. To help remedy this, the Elk Foundation helped construct an 8-foot fence around a 10-acre aspen and riparian area, once a large draw to the area’s 200 elk. If the fencing is a success, these elk will return to find a healed aspen and riparian habitat ripe for a fresh wallow.

SOUTH DAKOTA
Home to elk, deer, mountain goats and a variety of other wildlife, the Norbeck Wildlife Preserve covers nearly 35,000 acres. The Elk Foundation helped fund 53 acres of meadow and grassland restoration and 73 acres of non-commercial ponderosa pine thinning, as part of a larger project to improve habitat there. Managers say without RMEF funding, the treatments needed to restore the habitats for big game and birds would not have been completed.

UTAH
In southern Utah, ponderosa pine forests are in many places accumulating dangerously high fuel loads, and water-greedy pinyon pines and junipers are encroaching on native grasslands vital to elk, mule deer and other wildlife. The Elk Foundation partnered with Dixie National Forest to conduct two prescribed burns to reduce the risk of catastrophic fire, restore the natural ecosystem and promote the growth of sagebrush, grasses and other important elk forage. This will also reduce elk impacts on nearby private land.

WASHINGTON
The State Department of Natural Resources received an Elk Foundation grant for the purchase of signs to aid in management of roads in the Ahtanum State Forest. The signs limited access to 55.5 miles of roads across 10,744 acres to help boost hunting quality, secure areas for calving elk and improve elk habitat. Biologists say more than 6,000 elk will benefit from the new road‑management system.

WYOMING
To produce varied age classes and structures of aspen, mountain shrubs and sagebrush near Elk Mountain in Lincoln County, the Elk Foundation sponsored a prescribed burn across 10,000 acres of BLM lands. Managers burned in mosaic patterns to improve plant communities crucial to elk, deer, moose and antelope. Decadent sagebrush, heavy browsing and the absence of fire had suppressed the productivity of the area for wildlife, reducing wildlife populations. RMEF funds paid for helicopters to operate a helitorch and for fuel.