Master’s project finds elk on move

Nancy Dewar spends her days driving unpassable roads, sneaking through bushes, and inspecting elk droppings—all in the name of higher education.
The Master’s student from Lakehead University in Thunder Bay spoke of her research in tracking elk movement and survival patterns at the Ministry of Natural Resources office here Friday morning as part of the Lake of the Woods Elk Workshop (Fort Frances District).
The project actually began in the spring of 2000 and 2001, under the supervision of researcher Terese McIntosh, when a total of 108 elk acquired from Elk Island National Park near Edmonton were reintroduced into an area 20 km south of Sioux Narrows that Dewar refers to as “the pen.”
Seventy-three of these animals were fitted with VHF radio collars to allow researchers to monitor their movements.
Dewar joined the project as a basis for her thesis in May of this year. Using ground and aerial tracking systems, she’s been kept busy trying to track down where both the collared and uncollared elk have relocated.
“I found 70 percent of the elk were within 20 km of the release site after two and three years of being there while 30 percent has dispersed to the south to the Fort Frances, Rainy River, and Nestor Falls areas,” she noted.
Dewar discovered while the adults were prone to roam a significant distance from where they were first released, the calves were more likely to stay within familiar surroundings.
Of the original elk, an estimated 85 have survived so far.
Of those that died, 26 percent succumbed to what Dewar called translocation injuries—meaning that during their journey to the area, they received bumps and bruises that led to bacterial infections.
Seventeen percent were victims of predation while another 17 percent suffered the fate of being illegally shot by hunters.
Dewar’s biggest problem with compiling her information is the male elks’ habit of shedding their collars.
“We’re going to try and remedy that problem by going on a large-scale collaring mission this winter,” said Dewar.
To further bring the population numbers up to date, she also will conduct a calf survey at the same time to judge the number of offspring the documented elk have produced.
Her eventual goal is to develop a habitat suitability index to help better determine the best possible areas to sustain the elk population—and to help facilitate elk management in Northwestern Ontario.
She did acknowledge the elk research had to be accepted with some degree of caution as decades of information are necessary to properly establish specific trends.
(Fort Frances Times)