On the morning of April 9, one of the Northwest’s largest cross-governmental efforts in recent years - involving the the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes’ Fish and Game Department, Idaho Fish and Game, Idaho State Police and the Idaho Transportation Department - got underway in a rural area in eastern Idaho, along Interstate 15 south of Blackfoot.
The objective: Moving about 600 elk to the east side of the freeway, some distance from people and traffic.
It was not a sudden appearance for the animals. Back before Christmas, Fort Hall law enforcement was reporting “large herds of elk and deer have migrated onto the Reservation, along with numerous moose. Winter conditions have pushed these animals to lower elevations along I-15, I-86 and nearby Reservation roadways, posing a potential hazard to motorists.†Area governments took notice and made some attempts to help, but the elk, as is their wont, were persistent.
That might seem a one-off of odd wildlife news except that, increasingly in the last few years, Idahoans living in cities have been getting a lot more up close and personal experience of wildlife than once was the case.
It’s not just Idaho, of course: People all over the country are reporting more encounters with the wild.
Travis Gallo, who teaches urban ecology at George Mason University in northern Virginia near Washington, remarked that, “Animals are just savvy, and they’re starting to adapt because development is pushing them into cities. (Such as Washington, which is developing a sort of wildlife-relations program.)
But as Idaho has grown and as climate has shifted in recent decades, the critters are moving into human settlements.
The Department of Fish and Game has cautioned residents “around Boise as well as other Idaho cities†to keep their pets well protected and possibly indoors as much as possible during the upcoming coyote denning season.
It also specifically alerted people around Twin Falls and elsewhere in the Magic Valley about, “increasing reports of coyote and fox activity around Twin Falls and as well as other areas of the Magic Valley … [One encounter] involved a fox that aggressively approached a man walking through a large vacant lot near Fred Meyer in Twin Falls. The report also noted that domestic cats have disappeared from the neighborhood.â€
And those reports only skim the surface. Within the last month just that one department reported (these are headlines from their news releases):
April 11: Fish and Game officer shoots dog for chasing and killing a deer in Pocatello
April 10: Juvenile mountain lion caught in residential chicken coop in Hailey
April 10: Coyote conflicts with off-leash dogs continue in the Boise foothills
March 30: F&G captures mountain lion in Ammon neighborhood
March 21: Mountain lions continue to be active throughout the Wood River Valley
March 20: F&G continues to monitor mountain lion activity in McCall
Again, it’s not that we’ve never seen any of this kind of thing before. It’s that we’re seeing more of it.
What this gets to is, we need to consider our relationship with the wild world.
One immediate response, this being Idaho, would be: Just shoot ‘em. And there’ll be cases where extreme measures will be needed, maybe including more creative hunting options. But for the most part, that won’t suffice; studies have shown that when animal populations dwindle sharply, increased reproduction tends to compensate.
Idaho, like other places, likely will need to employ a variety of responses, from coordinated efforts like the Blackfoot elk-movers, to greater care in keeping attractants - like food and small animals - away from hungry or predatory wildlife.
Maybe a little less comfortably, Idaho may want to take a look at how it manages its growth. Some of the increased interaction between people and wildlife grows out of the expansion of people living in and taking over areas where animals were accustomed to traveling and eating.
The possible answers are several. This belongs on the agenda for Idaho governments, going forward.