County takes role in future elk return

Remote Carlton County land west of Cloquet will be used to hold wild elk during the establishment of a herd, beginning as soon as 2026, following a vote by the county board Tuesday.

“They’re not asking for permission to bring elk here, they’re asking for us to sign a lease on a particular parcel,” commissioner Marv Bodie said, directing the board to stay on task during another meeting that featured a wide-ranging discussion on efforts by the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa and Minnesota Department of Natural Resources to bring elk to northeastern Minnesota.

“We’re not saying yes or no to the elk,” Bodie emphasized, noting that as a forgone conclusion.

The board voted 4-1 in favor of offering a parcel of tax-forfeited land to support a 5- to 10-acre holding pen.

The land is on high ground and features a logging road and trail access to the property in Progress Township. It’s near active logging, which will produce a forage area of up- to-10-year-old aspen trees that are a key to keeping elk rooted in the area, sources said.

The county land department had alerted township residents of the vote beforehand, and several folks appeared in the audience at the Carlton County Transportation Building on County Road 61.

“I welcome the elk in the area,” said Bill Jaskyri, of Sawyer, citing tourism possibilities associated with the herd. “People would come up to see the elk. I have two businesses in the area and they would benefit from it.”

County employee Kyle Holmes, of Wrenshall Township, hunts elk in Montana with a group that spent $14,000 during their most recent excursion.

“I’m all for elk reintroduction,” Holmes said. “My only hope is that the DNR does it right and we don’t end up with [chronic wasting disease] or any diseases, and the holding pen, in my point of view, is the way to do that.”

Commissioner Gary Peterson was the lone dissenting vote. Among a series of reservations he held about elk, Peterson noted the Red Lake Nation that fostered reintroduction of elk in the northwestern part of the state hadn’t agreed to use of its herd — which is key to the plan from the Band and DNR.

“We are going to be working very hard to bring Red Lake on board into this process,” Fond du Lac wildlife biologist Mike Schrage said.

County land commissioner Greg Bernu trumpeted the possibilities of elk as an ecotourism draw for their calving season and attractive bugling.

“While it’s not a huge economic generator like a paper mill or gas company, ecotourism is taking off,” Bernu said, later adding, “I see this as a way to help this county diversify its economy by boosting ecotourism and turning a buck.”

A cooperative survey regarding elk by the Band and University of Minnesota that weighed the opinions of 4,500 private landowners and 4,000 local residents in northeastern Minnesota was overwhelmingly in support of reintroduction.

But there was hesitation from some Progress Township residents, who mostly worried about introducing diseases into cattle and farm animals.

Troy Salzer, of Blackhoof Township, wanted to know about testing protocols, “because there’s an incubation period between the time they’re tested and retested (and reintroduced).”

Kelly Straka, wildlife section manager for the DNR, once helped lead the successful reintroduction of elk to Missouri. She fielded disease-related questions. No elk harvested in the state has tested positive for CWD, Straka, a veterinarian, said. And live testing is up to 99-percent effective.

“The testing is good,” she said, speaking specifically about live animal CWD testing. “But again, there is always a very, very small risk, and that’s when we start looking at ‘Let’s test the deer herd around elk.’”

Depending on the disease, including tuberculosis and brucellosis, Schrage said the animals would be tested following their capture and cleared before transportation from the Kittson County area, suggesting another pen on the western end of things.

“The pen we’re asking to build here is an acclimation pen — to let them settle down, get used to the sights and smells of the area, form their bonds,” he said, before releasing the animals during spring greenup in May.

The ultimate goal is to have 100 to 150 elk in the area, with likely 12 to 25 animals coming annually for roughly 10 years starting in February 2026.

The pen will be constructed using $4 million allotted by the legislature last year to help reintroduce the elk. The pen would be constructed to include 10-foot fencing. No mature bull elk are planned to be captured; rather spike and “raghorn” bulls would join cows and calves in being brought to the area.

Peterson worried about high-speed traffic crashes between elk and vehicles on Interstate 35 and Minnesota Highway 210. He noted Kittson County is sparsely populated and wide open farmland compared to Carlton County.

“They’re going to travel 20 to 30 miles; they’re not like a deer, they’ll travel distance,” he said, also addressing farmers’ crops and fields. “They trample everything down; you put a fence up, they’ll wreck your fence.”

Craigl Sterle, of Blackhoof Township, addressed the topics as a representative for the conservation group, the Izaak Walton League.

“We’ve been very supportive of it and we continue to be supportive of it,” Sterle said, adding dedicated radio broadcasts could give information on where the elk herd is. “We could help people know where the elk are to see and to let them know because of highway traffic accident potential.”

One Progress Township resident, Sven, whose last name was illegible on the sign-in sheet, said he resented the county board for potentially attracting “stupid city folk” into the region.

“I’m serious,” he said. “I live out in the middle of nowhere on purpose. … I’m always getting tourists stopping, getting lost on dirt roads. I get behind them trying to go somewhere, and they don’t have etiquette, all the litter they leave behind.”

Regardless, the prevailing opinion was one of the elk representing progress. Even though tribal and DNR hunting permits for elk are years, perhaps decades, away.

“It will take time to establish and grow a herd,” Schrage said. “But this is something we’re going to do for our kids and our grandkids.”

Next week

The county board approved a $33.5 million levy for 2024, up from $32.2 million in 2023 — a 4-percent increase. The Pine Knot will unpack the levy in its Dec. 22 issue.