Shooting mad

The people who moved to this spectacular city adjacent to Rocky Mountain National Park to get close to nature didn’t bargain on an elk infestation.

The animals migrate from the park and eat gardens, golf courses and potted plants, rub ornamental trees down to broken sticks, spar with swing sets and volleyball nets and attack people during spring calving. To address the problem, which routinely makes headlines here, the National Park Service may allow hunting in the 89-year-old park for the first time.

“I had a Rollerblader chased down the Lake Estes trail [by an elk] and tap-danced on. I’ve had several people chased out into the lake. I’ve seen everything from fences to wind chimes to bird feeders to bicycles to chairs to Christmas tree lights wrapped around elk antlers,” says Rick Spowart, a manager for the Colorado Division of Wildlife.

Within the national park about 60 miles northwest of Denver, the elk have reduced willows to pitiful stumps and devoured so many young aspen shoots that scientists warn the most scenic stands could disappear.

Like most current Estes Valley residents, the animals came from someplace else. After hunters wiped out elk and wolves in the 19th century, town officials imported a small replacement herd from Yellowstone in 1913 to attract tourists. Congress established Rocky Mountain National Park two years later and prohibited hunting there.

With the absence of predators such as wolves, the herd multiplied to 600 by the 1930s. In 1944, park rangers began shooting the animals to limit the population to 800 and protect aspen and willows. But public outcry prompted a change in tactics. Today the Park Service relies on the natural food supply and hunting outside the national park to control elk.

But when Estes Park sprouted lawns, trees and gardens during a 1990s subdivision boom and officials made newly annexed land off-limits to hunters, the town proved irresistible.

“It doesn’t get much better for an elk than a bunch of fertilized, watered bluegrass,” Spowart says.

Federal biologists now estimate the herd at 3,000 animals. In fall, the slightly ridiculous oo-eee of a bull’s bugle echoes through the subdivisions. Tourists who once departed by Labor Day now linger through October. So many elk-crazed visitors wander local golf courses that players fear they’ll hit someone with a ball. Crowds are bigger in the nearby national park.

“Go out in the evening and look for the traffic jams,” says Park Service biologist Therese John- son. “The elk put on an awesome show.”

Despite their appeal, everyone agrees some of the elk must go. A Park Service-led team is considering elk-control options: introducing contraceptives, allowing park personnel to shoot animals to thin the herd, herding animals with dogs, reintroducing wolves and allowing “agency-guided public marksmen,” such as local guides and hunters, to hunt inside the park. “So far we haven’t heard a huge outcry saying, ‘Don’t kill the elk,’ ” says Johnson. Her team proposes killing 300 elk in the first year, though “people are saying, ‘Why not 500?’ ”