The co-chair of the Northwestern Ontario Elk Restoration Coalition is expecting to receive word this week on which drivers will be allowed to make the trip to Elk Island National Park in Alberta to pick up the new herd.
“I am hoping that I will get the call someday this week,” Mike Solomon said Tuesday. “Right now, we are looking to get the elk either on the 7th or 8th of February.
“It is all very exciting right now.”
Though the dates are still tentative, Solomon is looking forward to being one of the people chosen to participate in the week-long effort.
“I was involved in the transportation of the elk last year and it is really a very complex thing,” he admitted. “We have a platoon of volunteers who have put in their requests to be drivers.
“It is now just a matter of hearing who has been picked to do it this year.”
With transportation supplied by the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation located in Rocky Mountain House, Alta., the drivers must first meet the company’s requirements before they will be allowed to participate in the transporting of the animals.
“Basically, the drivers have to have a [clean] driving record and a minimum insurance record,” Solomon noted. “We provide the company with the information and then they check it all out.
“We give them our picks but the final decision on who goes is really theirs.”
Once the driving team has been chosen, the volunteers then will be driven to Kenora, for their first of many stops en route to Elk Island National Park.
“Once we get our drivers to Kenora, we will have to arrange for them to get to Winnipeg,” Solomon said. “From Winnipeg, they will take a flight to Edmonton, where they will be met by the drivers and vehicles from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.
“From Edmonton, they will take the vehicles to Elk Island, where they will collect the elk. It is all very time-consuming.”
Though the time and work involved in bringing the new elk herd to Cameron Lake–located east of Highway 71 between Nestor Falls and Sioux Narrows–is stressful and exhausting on the volunteers, Solomon enthused it’s all worth the effort in the end.
“Right now there is a lot of stress and sleepless nights involved in this process,” he noted. “It is a hard week of work but once you see those elk go into the pen, you remember why you get involved.
“It is the legacy we have been talking about.”
Now just waiting for the phone to ring, Solomon confessed that it’s hard not to get excited about the prospect of getting the new herd here by early February.
“Things are still very tenuous right now,” he said. “I dislike saying that anything is definite but we are hoping to get the elk in their pen at Cameron Lake by Feb. 11.
“Seeing all of this finally coming together is very exciting.”
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
