Coastal Oregon communities grappling with rise in elk population

Millions of elk used to roam North America. But as the land was settled and hunted, they were largely driven out.

Yet over his 63 years, retired paper mill worker Bill Routh has seen the elk population in Warrenton and the surrounding area along the Oregon coast grow from maybe a handful to hundreds.

It’s not unusual, he said, to find a dozen roaming his yard. They eat his flowers and defecate on his lawn. Worse still, he’s sometimes scared to go outside to get the mail.

“(The elk) hit me from the side, threw me down and drug me across my driveway,” he said, describing an elk attack nine years ago that left the side of his body scraped.

“Luckily I got a hold of his horns, and when he lifted up, it popped me back up.”

Routh ran home for safety, then called the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

“They ended up shooting it, because they said that there was one other incident where a little girl was walking to school, and it chased her down the street trying to get her,” Routh said.

Over the last 30 years, the elk population along Oregon’s northern coast has ballooned. An elk sighting used to be an unexpected thrill, but now the animals, which can weigh 1,000 pounds, are trampling pets to death, ramming cars and even attacking people.

The population has boomed for several reasons. There is less willingness to shoot elk than back in the day. City limits have expanded into elk habitat. And elk have gained a taste for the plants humans like to cultivate, such as rhododendrons and grass.

Four years ago, then-Gov. Kate Brown set up a special “Oregon Solutions” system to find a fix. Essentially the governor, state officials, environmentalists, police, landowners and businesses — in fact, representatives from more than 40 interest groups — joined forces to work out a plan. They signed the Clatsop Plains Elk Collaborative in 2021.

But it’s taking time to yield results.

Warrenton Mayor Henry Balensifer said some of his constituents are exasperated.

“There’s definitely people who are like: ‘Just give me a gun and a permit, and I’ll go out and take care of it. Charge me $1,000 and I’ll do it,’” he said. “And there are people who are like, ‘Oh my God. No!’”

Balensifer said that, at the start of the group effort, nobody wanted to talk about culling elk. Instead, the working group looked at other options. Among them: fines to stop people feeding the animals. Education programs to stop tourists from parking on the side of the road for elk selfies. Artificial intelligence technology to let drivers know if a herd is on the highway. And new ways to track migration routes as a means to encourage elk herds to stay in parts of the state that are still wild.

The study even included talk of a plan to relocate the animals. But apparently, once an elk gets a taste for rhododendrons, it will walk miles back to town to satisfy that craving.

“Not to mention, relocation is ungodly expensive,” the mayor said.

Vet fees, quarantine and transportation costs all added up to $15,000 or more just to relocate one animal.

Sterilizing elk to reduce the population spread also presented logistical problems. Dart one elk, and the herd scatters, making it hard to know which animal was sterilized.

Eventually, culling was put back on the table. Which poses the question: How many elk is too many elk for coastal communities?

“We’re going to rely on biologists to decide that,” Balensifer said. “We’ve got OSU extension doctorates, PhDs that are working with us.”

It’s both a biological and a societal question. Balensifer said that instead of focusing on a specific number of animals to kill, people studying the elk problem are going to focus on a process.

“You remove a certain population, and then you study,” he said. “Are vehicular accidents going down? Are attacks on people going down? Are dog deaths going down? … From there you adjust your strategy until you get to a point where public safety is less of a concern.”

No date has been set to start a cull. But if one occurs, there will be strict rules about who will be allowed to shoot animals and where and when culling can take place.

Fifteen miles down the road at the Gearhart Golf Links, people who’ve been dealing with their own elk problem say culling may help.

For years, golf course staff would drive elk off the greens with coordinated golf-cart maneuvers and paint-ball guns, efforts that drew little more than the equivalent of elk eyerolls.

General manager Jason Bangild said they had better luck warding off elk with coyote statues soaked in coyote urine.

“But it’s not a realistic option,” he said, " to keep moving decoys and buying gallons of urine.”

Instead, people who owned land outside the city limits took part in a state fish and wildlife program that allowed them to shoot elk on their properties.

Bangild said it seems to have done the trick.

“In the last year or so, here at the golf course, it’s been better,” he said.

But Gearhart is a smaller community and isn’t surrounded by large open spaces like Camp Rilea and Fort Stevens State Park.

“The public can’t hunt inside city limits, and they can’t hunt inside a military base, and they can’t hunt inside a state park,” said Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologist Paul Atwood. “So a lot of the traditional wildlife tools in Warrenton are just off the table.”

And there are people in Warrenton and in other coastal communities facing the elk question who are dead set against culling.

“(Elk) eat my flowers and I don’t care,” said Pamela Chater, who lives in Cannon Beach with two dogs. " I think they’re magnificent beasts.”

She remembers an eight-point bull that locals named Eli. Someone shot him with an arrow.

“It took him three days to die ... That really set me on fire as far as wanting to protect the elk,” Chater said. “They were here first.”

Meanwhile, Warrenton is working with state regulators to set up a culling program, and the Oregon Food Bank is looking into new freezers, so the resulting venison does not go to waste.