The Northwest Has an Elk Problem

Elk may be icons of the Northwest, but in the Blue Mountains where Oregon, Washington, and Idaho meet, they're increasingly seen as a problem. Anna Griffin of the New York Times reports that herds once expected to stay mostly on national forestland are spilling onto private ranches like Shaun Robertson's 4,300 acres in eastern Oregon, chewing up pasture, trampling fields, and igniting political fights over who should bear the cost. A tangle of shifting federal forest policies, growing predator populations, bigger wildfires, and the Trump administration's push for more logging, roads, and recreation on public lands has made forests less appealing refuges—and ranches more attractive alternatives.

States are responding with more hunting tags, scare tactics, and higher payouts to farmers for crop damage, but landowners say it's not nearly enough. Biologists, meanwhile, warn that increasingly stressed herds, especially in Washington's Blue Mountains, are seeing worrying drops in calf survival. Layer on trophy hunters, weekend landowners marketing "elk properties," and tribes that view elk as spiritually central, and the question becomes: who gets to shape the animal's future? For the full picture, read Griffin's piece at the New York Times.