Tagged: jackie skaggs

The National Park Service and the Game and Fish Department changed regulations for hunting elk in Grand Teton National Park. Part of the reason for these changes is to avoid contact between hunters and grizzly bears.

Last year a hunter participating in the annual elk reduction program shot and killed a grizzly in the park. In 2011, a grizzly mauled a hunter. Both encounters involved bears protecting animal carcasses.

Park officials don’t normally send out press releases upon the natural death of a wild animal. But this case was different. The buck mule deer with the unusually branched forty-inch antlers had become a visitor favorite, the subject of photos and even some YouTube videos.But over the last couple of weeks, rangers began monitoring his limp. Soon after, the buck bedded down and died.

The annual elk reduction program in Grand Teton National Park begins on October 6.

Federal law requires the park to maintain a sustainable population of the Jackson elk herd. To keep the numbers low enough, they’ve had to harvest elk each year for decades.

Park Spokeswoman Jackie Skaggs says an over-sized elk herd could harm the park.

“The risk of having too large of a population is that they would over-graze the range," Skaggs said. "And that would probably be a detrimental impact to other species.”

A young Grizzly Bear and a mother antelope were killed Thursday in Grand Teton National Park on Highway 89, the park’s main road.

The grizzly was killed when one car swerved to avoid another car and rolled, hitting and killing the bear that was by the side of the road. The driver was treated for minor injuries at Saint John’s Hospital in Jackson. Another car hit an antelope near Gros Ventre Junction, and failed to report the collision. Park spokeswoman Jackie Skaggs says, drivers need to be extra aware when driving in the park.

Fire managers in the Jackson area have raised the fire danger rating to “high” for Teton County, the Bridger-Teton National Forest and Grand Teton National Park.

National Park spokesperson Jackie Skaggs says the rating is based on a combination of high temperatures, high winds, low humidity and low moisture content in plants. She says campers need to be exceptionally careful with cigarettes, camp stoves and camp fires.