Meetings between officials of Teddy Roosevelt National Park and North Dakota Game and Fish were canceled when NDGF pulled out of the meetings protesting the fact that park officials are refusing to use hunters to assist in reducing the elk herd in the park.

The NDGF has worked with park officials to help draft an environmental impact statement concerning an overgrown elk herd.

Until Friday and for the past several years, the Game and Fish Department was what’s called a “cooperating agency” in the park’s development of an environmental impact statement. The process will deal with a population explosion of elk in the park that’s the result of a moratorium on moving elk to other places because of the threat of chronic wasting disease

Park officials have talked about their “alternatives” to using public hunters.

The alternatives include hiring sharpshooters to kill the elk in the park and airlifting out some carcasses and leaving some for predators, rounding them up and killing them for processing and meat distribution, or transferring them if it’s possible by the 2008 timeframe when the plan would be implemented.

NDGF say the plans considered by the park would be extremely costly and that using hunters and formulating a well devised plan would cost taxpayers nothing. Park officials lament that only an act of Congress would allow for hunting in the park.

So why not get the ball rolling and find a way to get an act of Congress? It’s time the parks were opened back up to everyone anyway.

Tom Remington

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