September 21, 2016
Landscape-Scale Habitat, Elk Research,
Other Oregon Projects Funded by RMEF Grants
MISSOULA, Mont.—The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation provided $297,310 in grant funding to assist with 28 wildlife habitat, research and hunting heritage projects across 25,327 acres in Oregon.
The grants will directly benefit Benton, Crook, Douglas, Grant, Harney, Klamath, Lake, Lane, Linn, Morrow, Tillamook, Umatilla, Union, Wallowa and Wasco Counties. There are also three projects of statewide benefit.
“There is a definite need for prescribed burning, thinning and other landscape work to maintain and spruce up elk habitat across Oregon,” said Blake Henning, RMEF chief conservation officer. “We’re especially grateful for our dedicated RMEF volunteers in Oregon who worked hard to raise this funding so it can be back on the ground in their home state.”
Since 1986, RMEF and its partners completed 835 conservation and hunting heritage outreach projects in Oregon with a combined value of more than $55.2 million. These projects protected or enhanced 786,802 acres of habitat and opened or secured public access to 28,383 acres.
Here is a sampling of the Oregon projects, listed by county:
Grant County—Continue a project aimed at improving important elk winter range and a critical migration corridor between the North Fork John Day Wilderness and the Bridge Creek Wildlife Area by applying noxious weed treatments and planting 200 quaking aspens to benefit elk and other wildlife on 754 acres of private land that allows public hunting.
Lake County—Provide funding for the first of a seven-year landscape-level aspen restoration project within the North Warner Mountains applying thinning and prescribed burning across 11,426 acres of elk calving and summer range on the Fremont-Winema National Forest.
Tillamook County—Provide funding for RMEF's Tillamook County Chapter to host an elk hunt for a terminally ill youth on Stimson Lumber Company land for the seventh consecutive year.
Union County—Provide funding for research at the Starkey Experimental Forest and Range that will offer new information regarding nutritional influences on elk populations to better enable landscape planners and biologists to link habitat conditions as well as changes in conditions to productivity and size of elk herds.
Go here for a full project listing.
Partners for the Oregon projects include the Deschutes, Fremont-Winema, Malheur, Mount Hood, Ochoco, Umatilla, Umpqua Wallowa-Whitman, and Willamette National Forests, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, Bureau of Land Management, Oregon Department of Agriculture, private landowners, and various sportsmen, civic, business and other organizations.