Several Ute, Navajo and Apache tribes in the southwest United States are jumping into the elk breeding business with hearty encouragement from the North America Elk Breeders Association. At the urging and lobbying of the growing elk industry, many states and provinces including Alberta, British Columbia, Colorado and Idaho are reclassifying elk as livestock and shifting regulatory authority from wildlife departments to more elk farm-friendly agricultural departments. Wisconsin recently eased restrictions on game farming and moved regulation from the Department of Natural Resources to the Department of Agriculture. Despite strong opposition from the state Division of Wildlife, the Utah legislature last March overwhelm-ingly passed a law that allows citizens to possess live, domesticated elk and designates the Department of Agriculture as regulators of the industry. The elk farming industry has planted deep roots in North America and continues to spread.
Few people seem concerned about the implications to America s wildlife and hunting heritage.
Several of the nation s largest hunting equipment retailers now sell elk meat through their mail-order catalogs. Not many people understand game ranching, what it is and what the dangers are, says Darrel Rowledge, director of the Alliance for Public Wildlife in Alberta. There s a whole array of complex issues that just don t fit into eight-second sound bites, and can t be laid out in a short newspaper column. It has, for whatever reason, a gloss over it that disguises it. Rowledge is pushing for a critical analysis of game farming for public review, so people can at least become more aware of the consequences.