SEQUIM — The presentation on the Dungeness elk herd’s future Tuesday night was planned as mostly polite PowerPoint-type display, like a public-television documentary.
Instead, it was a full-blown drama that ran for four hours, like a “Gone with the Wind” for Sequim’s iconic animals and rural way of life.
The Jamestown S’Klallam tribe and the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, co-managers of the Dungeness herd, presented to the public their “preferred alternative”: relocating some 76 animals to the meadows of Grays Harbor County on the South Olympic Peninsula.
The move could come in early 2008, as the elk are driven into corrals north of Sequim, put in livestock trailers and taken to a pen in what tribal biologist Jeremy Sage calls a “soft release” in the Wynoochee River valley.
More than 100 attend
More than 100 attended the “open house” at the Guy Cole Convention Center in Carrie Blake Park.
They started arriving at 5 p.m. though the official start time was 5:30.
Members of the crowd brought treatises that went on for pages, pictures of elk in their yards — and Carol Wickersham of Sequim brought a hot pink sign that read: “Don’t kick us out. Just fence us out. Save our elk.”
After an hour of slides and facts from Sage and Fish and Wildlife biologist Shelly Ament, the public-comment period heated up quickly.
Tina Vogel was first to deliver an impassioned plea for keeping the elk in Sequim.
Animals have perished in past transplant operations, she said, adding that she disagrees with city officials’ assertions that the elk pose a danger to people.
The audience cheered.
Fish and Wildlife region manager Jack Smith said the proposed relocation will use gentler methods, and though some elk may be so traumatized that they will die during or after relocation, most will survive.
South Peninsula valley
The Wynoochee Valley in East Grays Harbor County is the best place for the herd because, Jamestown S’Klallam Tribal Council member Kurt Grinnell said, it’s still a natural area compared with Sequim.
The city has more than 2,500 housing units on its “current projects” map.
Wynoochee is also a good alternative, Smith added, because it’s far away enough so the animals won’t walk back to the Dungeness Valley.
Wynoochee already has hundreds of elk, he said.
As the Dungeness herd arrives, some South Peninsula elk would be moved up to the Snow Creek area of Jefferson County.
John Chandler of Joyce stepped up next to ask how the co-managers know the new Snow Creek residents won’t walk west to the farms near Sequim, where crops have been damaged in recent years.
“I sometimes think the animals are smarter than we are,” Chandler said.
Again the crowd applauded.
