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Walking a mile in an elk's shoes ... er |
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November 18, 2016 |
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| Elk getting
a first-class ride to the landing zone. |
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By Casey McCormack
IDFG Wildlife Technician
For the past several years Idaho Department of
Fish and Game has been working on a project to
get to know our elk a bit better. Efforts and
methods to monitor elk populations have always
been a high priority for IDFG but recently new
technology has given us an opportunity to walk a
mile in our elk’s “shoes”… ermm … I mean
“hooves,” like we never have before.
 The
tools that give us the opportunity do this are
VHF radio telemetry and GPS wildlife collars.
VHF (very high frequency) telemetry collars have
been around for quite some time and are still
used today. These collars emit a signal at a
specific frequency that allows us to get an
approximate location and check to see if an
animal is alive or dead. In 2011 and 2013 a
total of 39 elk were collared with VHF collars
around Calder and Avery. While VHF collars can
be useful for determining survival rates, it
requires someone to be in close proximity on the
ground or in the air to check on collared
animals.
More recently, wildlife collars have improved
drastically and now use GPS technology. This
allows biologists to place a GPS collar on an
animal, set it, and forget it… well, kind of.
Since 2014, 83 cows and 113 calves have been
captured and fitted with GPS collars in Game
Management Units 3, 4, 6, 7 and 9. Bulls are not
collared and any male calves collared are fitted
with a collar designed to expand and break off
after about 6 months as the animal grows.
In order to efficiently capture and collar elk,
helicopters must be used. This involves using
tranquilizer darts or nets from the air. Those
animals are processed on site or loaded into a
sling below the helicopter and brought to a
landing zone to be processed.
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| Elk being
processed and fitted with collar. |
During processing, blood and fecal samples are
taken to check for disease and/or pregnancy. Age
is estimated by looking at the animal’s teeth
and a measure of body condition is taken.
Once the animals have been measured and fitted
with a GPS collar, the helicopter takes it back
home.
After the animal is released these GPS collars
are able to record and send exact locations of
each animal on a daily basis. This gives us up
to date and detailed information regarding
habitat use and movement for up to three or four
years
With this information we will be able to see how
large of an area individual’s use, what habitat
is preferred during different times of the year
and will hopefully give us an understanding of
important habitat while calving.
Having a collar send us information daily also
gives us detailed survival rates and the
opportunity to accurately determine the cause of
death for each animal.
When a collar remains still for eight hours it
sends a mortality signal notifying us that the
animal has not moved and may be dead. When we
receive these signals we respond as quickly as
possible, usually within a day.
While sometimes we simply find a collar that has
broken and fallen off a young male, often we
find a kill site. Getting to the kill site
within 24 hours allows us the valuable
opportunity to see exactly what happened and who
or what the likely culprit was.
Stay tuned for results from the mortality
investigations soon. |
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