BOZEMAN — The population of the Gallatin Valley is growing, for both its human and its wildlife populations.
We talked with Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) about an ongoing effort to see how the valley's elk and humans interact.
There are elk living in the Gallatin Valley and sometimes they are intersecting with the people who also live in the valley. FWP continuing an effort to see just what that looks like.
“Fish, Wildlfie and Parks is capturing elk on the southside of Bozeman here in the Gallatin Valley to collar eight cow elk so that we can get GPS coordinates and locations for elk as they travel around the valley,” FWP spokesman Morgan Jacobsen said.
The most noticeable interaction between the elk and the people happens along Highway 191 — and there are others.
"Other things we want to understand better is how elk are using a mix of public and private land so that [we] can inform things like habitat management and other land uses hers in the valley,” Jacobsen said.
Those collars will send data for up to three years and as we all know, a lot can change in the Gallatin Valley in that time -- especially when it comes to the land.
“The information we gather from this effort can help inform the processes that come into land use planning, development, as well as conflict mitigation such as vehicle collisions on the highway and agriculture and other things like that,” Jacobsen said. “So, it’s really just a variety of benefits from gathering this information, all in the reality of growing human population in the Gallatin Valley as well.”
Jacobsen says FWP collared four elk last year and is working to collar another eight this year. Since the collars use GPS, the data is available in real-time over the course of the collar’s lifetime.
