SEQUIM – Now that the managers of the Dungeness elk herd have changed their plans for the animals – an elk fence is now the preferred alternative rather than an elk swap with the Southern Olympic Peninsula – new questions have arisen.
Should the fence be built close to U.S. Highway 101, making this a drive-by herd motorists can see from the road, perhaps with the city of Sequim establishing a viewing area near the Happy Valley Road-101 intersection?
Or should the fence be built farther south of the highway, to keep the elk off Happy Valley farms and gardens and away from traffic traveling 55 miles per hour?
The state Fish and Wildlife Department and the Jamestown S’Klallam tribe, who are co-managers of the tribe, will ultimately decide the herd’s fate.
But the Dungeness Elk Working Team, an advisory group made up of wildlife biologists and other local residents, wrangled with those questions for a few hours Wednesday – and by the end of the meeting, cautious optimism hung in the air.
“I’m glad to see they’re moving in this direction,” said Wayne Marion, the western regional director of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.
One thing is clear: Many are with Marion.
After a public meeting in August during which the managers laid out the relocation proposal, scores of letters and e-mails poured into Fish and Wildlife region manager Jack Smith’s mailbox.
“A fair summary” of those messages, Smith said, “would be four to one against the preferred alternative” of moving the elk out of the Dungeness Valley.
Last month, the Sequim Elk Habitat Committee placed newspaper advertisements proposing a fence on the south side of Highway 101.
The fence would run, the ads said, from the Seven Cedars Casino to the Dungeness River.
The ads were designed to act as “a lightning rod – to see what hit it,” said habitat committee member Frank Figg.
What hit it were about 100 people, the vast majority of whom want a fence.
Another 15 to 20 like-minded e-mails hit the box of Clallam County Commissioner Steve Tharinger, D-Dungeness.
