New Yukon Fish and Game Association job aims to deal with problem elk

The Yukon Fish and Game Association is launching a two-year pilot project aimed at working with hunters, farmers and government on elk management.  Applications for the role of elk-agriculture coordinator were due by Monday.

"The Fish and Game Association was involved when elk were introduced to the Yukon years ago," said association president, Eric Schroff. "We still have an interest in maintaining and growing the elk population in the Yukon with the idea that they are great species to have on the landscape."

Elk were first introduced to the Yukon in the 1950s, and another herd was brought to the Takhini Valley north of Whitehorse in the 1990s.

Schroff said the animals are "opportunistic" and acknowledges that, as the herd has grown, they have caused problems on farm land — which has also been increasing in the territory.

"It's kind of a problem that grew and grew from both ways," said Schroff. "And there has been a lot of work done over the past number of years on the agricultural side of things, building fences, testing new or different fencing configurations to reduce elk incursions into agricultural farms. But it's not perfect, and some folks don't like to see fences. And the elk look at that as a great opportunity." 

'There's not one farmer out there that knows what's in this program'

The elk-agriculture coordinator will have a number of tools at their disposal to mitigate the problems caused by elk on farmland in the Takhini Valley, Schroff said. One of those will be the opportunity to coordinate with hunters, farmers and conservation officers, so that hunters can get permission to hunt "problem elk" on agricultural land. 

"In the Yukon, there is a rule that you can't hunt within one kilometre of a residence unless you have permission, and you can imagine how much overlap there is from one residence to the next in the Takhini River Valley," said Schroff. "So the landowner where elk are bothering their property may be absolutely inclined to give permission to hunt, but they have to also receive permission from adjacent land owners. We hope the coordinator will help that process."

This plan came as a surprise to a group of farmers in the Takhini Valley.

"There's not one farmer out there that knows what's in this program," said Mike Blumenschein.

"They have no details on what's going to come down the ladder as far as conditions that are going to be put on them."

Blumenschein said he quit farming because of the elk, but stayed on the Elk-Agriculture Steering Committee set up by the Yukon government until spring of 2023. He said he quit the committee because of a lack of communication, and conflict with the president of the Yukon Agriculture Association.

"We spent 15 years trying all sorts of different stuff to eliminate the problem," said Blumenschein. "We were pushed into the corner where the only solutions left were to have an exclusion zone in the Takhini Valley, or the government has to pay to fence all agricultural property or relocate the elk."

An exclusion zone for elk, said Blumenschein, would mean that, within the prescribed area, the animal could be hunted year-round.

"They'd be getting pressure on them all the time," he said. "Which would make them move."

The creation of an exclusion zone had the support of all of the farmers in the area, and when the government didn't pursue this option, it resulted in a lack of trust, said Wayne Grove, who started raising elk and bison on his property in the Takhini Valley in 1996. 

"We have roughly 450 acres here," he said. "There's several fields; one field is a mile long, and we've put up in excess of 10 kilometres of game fence, which kind of resembles Jurassic Park. It's an eight-foot wall of wire. Nothing gets in or out of that. Always steel posts, and some of those posts we had to cross the river valley down below. Those posts are in the ground 20 feet deep, so they don't jack out with frost. This is a mammoth job."

Grove and his wife sued the Yukon government in 2020, alleging that mismanagement of the herd was an act of negligence. The Yukon Supreme Court threw out the case on the basis that it had no reasonable prospect of success. But that decision was overturned by the territorial Court of Appeal in 2022. The case is scheduled to go to court in October.

Grove said elk bulls will ram through eight-foot wire fencing to get whatever crop lies beneath the snow.

"The elk bed down to chew their cud," he said.

"This is at nighttime when you don't even know they're in the field, and they create an ice lens, and it's like putting an ice rink on your lawn," says Grove. "In the spring, you've got no lawn left, and this is happening on fields with high-value crops that we're trying to feed the Yukon's population with."

Still, Grove said, the Fish and Game Association's plan to bring hunters onto agricultural land doesn't hold much appeal.

"Would you want strangers with big guns coming to your house?" he asked.

The Yukon Government has provided $175,000 in funding to cover the salary for an elk-agriculture coordinator over a period of two years.