Blue Mountains Elk Initiative Marks 35 Years of Habitat Work

Thirty-five years of elk work in the Blue Mountains is worth paying attention to. The Blue Mountains Elk Initiative has been operating across northeast Oregon and southeast Washington since 1991, bringing RMEF, ODFW, WDFW, the Forest Service, BLM, tribal nations, private landowners, and other partners to the same table.

The scale is not small. The initiative focuses on a 19-million-acre landscape and has helped put more than $21 million into 445 habitat improvement and research projects affecting over 560,000 acres.

That is what conservation looks like when it is tied to dirt, timber, water, winter range, and migration country instead of slogans. Elk need habitat before they need speeches. So do mule deer, whitetails, turkeys, songbirds, predators, and everything else using that country.

Hunters fund and fight for this kind of work because healthy herds do not happen by accident. They happen when access, habitat, harvest, and science are all treated like they matter.