Ashley HarrellĬhambers’ neighbor’s horse was also attacked recently, and now has a puncture wound in his shoulder, she adds, and I begin to realize that in this town, people can tell stories of dangerous elk encounters pretty much all day. The female elk, referred to as the cow, can become aggressive when her offspring is near. He had to call 911 because he couldn’t get away from her. “My son was on his bike … up on Prairie Creek and a mother got him cornered with a baby. I was like, um, can someone please come give me a ride?” “I was walking home the other night from my friend’s house, and I had to turn around and come back because one of the bulls started chasing me across the street. “It’s crazy this time of year,” agrees Orick resident Christine Chambers, who works at the Snack Shack. “They’re thinking through the other one.” “They’re not thinking through this brain right now,” says Baker, pointing at her own head. This involves making highly unpleasant sounds that begin with a low pitch and end with screeches and grunting. The problem becomes especially pronounced during the late summer breeding season, also called the rut, when bull elk fight violently with each other and do a thing called bugling. The elk look pretty harmless when they're lying down. But the need for understanding the creatures has grown, according to environmental scientists, as human-elk conflicts along the Highway 101 corridor - including vehicle collisions, property damage and agricultural losses - have mounted. In the past, studying Roosevelt elk was notoriously difficult because they lived in dense forests where standard research tools like aerial surveys and trapping weren’t useful. (The others are Rocky Mountain elk - which have the biggest horns - and Tule elk, which people are currently fighting about for entirely different reasons.) Roosevelt elk are one of three subspecies of elk that are native to California, and they are the largest of the three, weighing more than 1,000 pounds. The elk, or wapiti (Cervus canadensis), is one of the largest species of deer in the world and one of the largest mammals in North America and eastern Asia. It’s hard to drive, and it’s dangerous for locals and tourists.” “They need to have an open season on elk,” said Ede Baker, owner of the Snack Shack across from Redwood National and State Parks. The point is to study the elk in hopes of identifying solutions, but residents and ranchers in Humboldt and Del Norte counties already have some ideas. In response, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) recently initiated one of the largest Roosevelt elk capture and collaring efforts in California history.
Never eat weed candy and then hike alone in a wilderness where wild elk roam. As more and more Roosevelt elk show up in the agricultural and tourist areas surrounding Redwood National and State Parks, human-elk conflict has escalated. It turns out that I am one of many Northern Californians who have recently worried about the elk. Was I paranoid, or was this elk staring me down and planning an attack?
And the weed candy I had eaten really wasn’t helping. There was one of me, and an entire herd of elk blocking the trail. I started to consider my situation: I was on the Lost Coast, a wilderness so remote and rugged that engineers opted to bypass it when constructing Highway 1. I had read these things at some point, but in that moment I felt deeply surprised, then concerned, that this hefty deer cousin was standing its ground. And when they start their rutting season - which, by the way, is right now - they tend to become aggressive and have been known to charge people, cars and livestock. Here’s an important thing to know about Roosevelt elk: They are not afraid of humans.
0 kommentar(er)
