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Southwest Washington Wildlife Reports
February 20, 2007

Elk along the river gravel bar where supplemental feeding and lack of disturbance allows them to conserve their energy.

Region 5 Wildlife Areas:

Mt. St. Helens Wildlife Area Emergency Winter Feeding: Use rate of hay has increased and is up to 100% again, particularly at the western part of the feeding area. In response, the daily feed rate has been increased to 4,000 pounds of alfalfa hay per day. Most counts from the road during daily feeding operations are back up to an estimated 350 elk or higher. We will continue to adjust feed rates to estimated elk numbers, observed usage rates, and weather conditions.

Replanting of some of the erosion control plantings has started. Just over 1 mile of seeding has been accomplished to date, with about 100 willow and cottonwood cuttings collected and planted as well.

Wildlife Biologist Woodin assisted Wildlife Area staff in distributing alfalfa on the mudflow last week. The elk are taking full use of this supplemental feed while continuing to forage on the slight green-up of the grasses. The elk are present along the valley floor and the lack of disturbance allows them to conserve their energy.

Westside Research Workshop: Region 5 Wildlife Biologists along with Program Manager Jonker attended the Westside Research Workshop presented by WDFW's Science Division. The workshop featured presentations and updates on current research projects in Western Washington. Several species and groups of species were topics of excellent presentations including marine mammals, marbled murrelets, snowy plovers, streaked horned larks, western grey squirrels, and mountain goats. This was a very useful process to disseminate research results to the District and field biologists.

Additional discussion focused on the process by which Regional interests and concerns are developed into research projects. The meeting concluded with an opportunity to list research questions that are currently of interest to Regional Staff. In Region 5, several potential topics of future research were mentioned. These included an examination of the effects of the use of herbicides in forest plantations, including their effect on the nutritional status of deer and elk; nutrition and body condition of elk as they relate to carrying capacity and mortality; development of new ways to quantify deer and elk populations in heavily forested environments; an investigation into potential nutritional competition among turkeys, western grey squirrels, and forest grouse; and research into the effects of the long term decline, including hairloss syndrome, in blacktail deer.