Point Reyes Light- December 3, 1998

Helicopter gives elk rides from Pierce Point

With the 550 tule elk on Pierce Point having long since overpopulated their range, 11 members of the herd found themselves dangling from a helicopter 50 feet above the Point Reyes National Seashore on Tuesday.

Beginning in 1997, the Park Service began using helicopters to net female elk in order to immunize them and inject contraception. But this time, the helicopter rides were a short part of the elks' journey toward a more spacious home at Limantour Beach.

The eight elk cows and three spiked bulls (bulls too young for full-sized racks) were the first of the herd to be relocated from their old range to the new one. None had ever flown before nor had any traveled on a highway.

Yet the first-time travelers did all right despite a somewhat turbulent flight, said Dr. Irwin Liu, a UC Davis veterinarian. "They've done very well. Overall, the whole process has been good to excellent. It's been synchrony."

Although the helicopter had to be grounded at midday because of equipment problems, the morning unfolded with dreamlike choreography, Dr. Liu suggested.

Healthy elk were selected by the helicopter crew, who netted, hobbled, and blindfolded the animals one by one. Each elk was placed in a canvas sling, which hung below the helicopter.

Minutes later they were lowered to the ground near the road, where they were inspected by park staff and veterinarians, who checked their temperature and heartbeat, took blood and fecal samples, and injected them with a special brew of Vitamin E, selenium, antibiotics, and a vaccine against tetanus and other diseases, Dr. Liu said.

Next, the elk were carried gingerly to a small corral padded with burlap and herded into a roomy horse trailer - all done as if to music, the doctor said. "'Synchrony' means that the rhythm is there."

It was a day of novelty - and not just for the elk, said UC Davis endocrinologist Dr. Susan Shideler, who has participated in the park's elk-monitoring program since 1995.

"Today we get to test a new, single-shot contraceptive on some of the female elk that we caught," she said. "The shot uses the same contraceptive that we've been using over the past two years - PZP [porcine zona pellucida]. But it delivers the drug on a timed-release basis.

"This relieves us of the burden of having to give a booster after giving the elk the initial shot, which is what we've been doing up to now."

So researchers can compare how the relocated elk will fare, some of the cows were given the new shot; others received the shot requiring a booster; and the rest were left alone "to natural selection," she said.

Dr. Shideler said she was particularly excited about the park's planned-parenthood scheme because PZP's contraceptive powers are temporary. This means that female elk that have been inoculated in the past can still conceive in the future.

So far, the contraceptive has been 74 percent effective among the herd's members, said Bill Shook, the park's chief of natural resources. Fertility levels among the elk that were moved above Limantour Beach will also be "closely monitored," he said, adding that the animals will be easy to track because each was given a numbered ear tag and a color-coded radio collar.

The new 25-acre elk range is located alongside the Coast Trail just north of Coast Camp and is completely fenced in...for now.

"The fence is temporary and will be removed after the elk have been monitored and tested for several months," Shook said. "We have to let them get used to their new range and make sure that none have Johne's disease [a debilitating illness contagious to cattle] before they're released."

The elk will eventually roam in an unfenced 23,000-acre area - understatedly called "Limantour," for it stretches from the top of Inverness Ridge near Inverness and Inverness Park south to the edge of Bolinas.

"We hope the elk will establish 'home' areas where they'll have plenty of food and little disturbance," said Tom Kucera, park wildlife biologist. "We're trying to re-establish them as the dominant grazing animal in this area where they've been for 70,000 years.

"They only became extinct here after the Gold Rush, and had to be re-introduced." In 1977, the Park Service reintroduced elk in the park. Eight cows and two bulls were trucked here from San Luis National Wildlife Refuge north of Los Banos, Merced County. It took only 20 years from those 10 to increase to more than 500.

In their spacious new home at Limantour, birth control may not be as much of a necessity, said Dr. Shideler.

However some West Marin residents such as nature photographer Sue Van Der Wal of Inverness have expressed concern that the elk may spread to private property on the east side of Inverness Ridge.

In addition, she has warned, the southwestern portion of the National Seashore could come to resemble the elk's "trampled" range on Pierce Point, which used to be more lush with vegetation.

Several ranchers in the National Seashore said that they'd like park staff to fence in areas so that cattle would not mix with the elk. The ranchers, however, said they are not worried about the elk per se - at least not while the new herd's population is small.

Said Olema Valley rancher Jo Ann Stewart, "The way I look at it, this is a park. I like wildlife, and don't think the elk will be a problem. I don't mind them as much as I mind the axis and fallow deer."

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