Today's Date: May 18, 2010

It’s Beebe, Baeza, Brijalba at the city;

Lujan stays on school board

MARFA – Voters on Saturday put twoincumbents and a political newcomer intoCity Hall and reelected the current schoolboard president to her seat at Marfa ISD.

Four candidates ran for three spots on thecity council. Incumbent David Beebe ledthe pack with 295 votes, followed byfellow council member Manny Baeza, with260, and former city of Marfa employeeCorina Brijalba, who polled 209 votes.

The 148 votes cast for candidate AbeGonzales, a former Presidio Countysheriff, put him out of the running, sincethe top three vote getters will take office.

Voters also re-approved a quarter-cent citysales tax that goes to street maintenance.The issue has to go before voters everyfour years.

At the school district, incumbent YvonneLujan will continue as the Place 5representative. She earned 211 votes,outpolling challengers Fred Martinez, with145 votes, and Raul Lara, who was chosenby 106 voters.

School board trustees Elvia Agan andRobert Halpern were not opposed and willreturn to office.

The council members will be sworn intooffice individually between May 15 andMay 31, according to Mayor Dan Dunlap.

“That way they can bring in their familymembers and do it at their convenience,”he explained. “It’s the way I’ve done it inthe past.”

The swearing in of school board members

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Landowner locks horns with Parksand Wildlife over elk shootingsBy STERRY BUTCHER

CULBERSON COUNTY – A Van Horn-area rancher is challengingTexas Parks and Wildlife’s practice of shooting elk in the SierraDiablo Wildlife Management Area.

Christopher Gill and his family own the 32,000-acre Circle Ranchnot far from Van Horn. The ranch neighbors the Sierra DiabloWMA, an 11,000-acre tract that was set aside, in 1945, as habitatfor desert bighorn sheep. This winter, said Gill, he was troubled tolearn that over the course of several years, Parks and Wildlifepersonnel had shot 25 elk on the state property.

“These are good guys at Parks and Wildlife whose efforts on ourbehalf we need,” Gill said. “But we’ve got to get them on the rightpath. People love elk; they don’t want their removal.”

Elk indeed have been shot, acknowledged Parks and WildlifeExecutive Director Carter Smith, and there is a purpose for it.

“Bighorn conservation is the reason we’re in the Sierra Diablo,” hemaintained. “Our team has a management goal of working tomanage elk in lowest numbers practicable, due to concerns overcompetition with bighorn sheep.”

Reintroduction efforts since 1945 have yielded a present,successful population of about 1,500 bighorn in Texas, both freerange and in the Sierra Diablo, Elephant Mountain and Black GapRMAs. No concrete census number exists for elk in the sameregion, though populations have been reported in the Sierra Diablo,the Chinati and the Glass mountain ranges.

Elk are among North America’s largest mammals. Five feet tall atthe shoulder and weighing close to 1,000 pounds, elk are prizedgame animals in places like Colorado and Oregon. Not so in Texas,where the Legislature in 1997 declared them a non-game animal.Most of them are captive-bred and released onto private property.If you’re strolling on your land and come upon an elk, it’s legal toshoot it, so long as you have a valid state hunting permit.

“They’re treated by Parks and Wildlife as an exotic species –there’s no management of them, no elk license, bag limit orseason,” said Michael Gookins, the Texas director for the RockyMountain Elk Foundation, which has provided funding for SulRoss State University elk studies in the Glass Mountains. “If itwere a game animal, Parks and Wildlife would have to take up thattask and do counts, issue permits and all that.”

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The swearing in of school board memberswill take place at a board meeting later thismonth.

Johnson re-elected Alpine mayor;

Davidson takes

council seat

ALPINE - Jerry Johnson won re-electionas Alpine’s mayor Saturday by nearly atwo-to-one margin over his challenger,Clarence Russeau.

Johnson won 254 votes, or 60 percent, toRusso’s 168.

In the three-way race for the Ward 2 citycouncil seat, Mike Davidson won 42 votes,or nearly 50 percent; Stephanie McGrawreceived 27 votes; Susan Curry 17.

Julian Gonzalez, who did not faceopposition, was elected to his post as Ward4 council member.

Ferguson, Carrerra, Ramirez win city

council seats

By TOM HAI�ES

PRESIDIO - Challenger Rafa Carrerra andincumbents John Ferguson and JaimeRamirez won the three contested citycouncil seats in Saturday’s election.

Alcee Tavarez and Eliza Mills placed fourthand fifth in the voting.

Ferguson won 231 votes, or 30 percent;Carrerra won 157, or 20 percent; Ramirez134, or 18 percent. Tavarez, who garnered133 votes, missed tying Ramirez for thethird council seat by one vote. Millsreceived 110 votes.

It was uncertain whether Tavarez, anincumbent, will seek a recount to verify theclose result.

“I am debating whether to ask for arecount, but haven’t decided yet,” Tavarezsaid.

(photo courtesy Christopher Gill)

Elk on the Circle Ranch in Culberson County.

Texas Parks and Wildlife’s management plan for the Sierra Diablostates concerns about elk: they can forage for the same food asbighorn and rely on the same, scanty water sources. They’re reallygood at surviving in Far West Texas.

“Both aoudad and elk and their high level of adaptability pose athreat to native species and native ecosystems,” reads themanagement plan. “All exotics on the WMA will be lethallyremoved when encountered.”

Gill and Smith traded extensive letters on elk this winter and springand Smith, along with other Parks and Wildlife officials, traveled tothe Circle Ranch to meet with Gill personally. After thesediscussions, and to be sensitive to Gill’s objections, Parks andWildlife amended the management plan very slightly to read “exoticungulate populations will be controlled at the lowest numberspossible.” The part about elk being “lethally removed whenencountered” is still in the plan.

“This is a conflict that’s limited to one disagreement with onelandowner and one mountain range,” said Smith. “It’d bepractically impossible to now eliminate elk from the WMA – theterrain is too rough and too rugged. Our revised goal in respect toelk reflects that. It also reflects the 70 years of conservationhistory we have with many partners to bring back the bighorn.We’re loathe to see that compromised because of a singlelandowner’s interest in introducing elk to the mountain range.”

Elk are shot only when they are encountered incidentally, he added.

“We’ve harvested 25 elk in the last eight years, but by no meanshave we put a dent in the population,” Smith said. “When theoccasion presented itself and staff could act, they wereoccasionally successful in controlling elk, but there are notorganized harvest efforts.”

Gill pronounced himself “deeply disappointed” with the slimrevision. His ranch is a recreational hunting property. Gill’s apassionate and informed practitioner of holistic managementstrategies for his land, in which he aims to restore flora and faunato what it was prior to European settlement.

Elk are vital to that plan, according to Gill, and he’s released about50 of them over the years.

“It is a ranch we manage primarily for wildlife,” he said. “Theprimary habitat tools we use are animals, including cattle, sheep,elk, deer and pronghorn. We manage according to ourunderstanding of communities of living organisms that aresymbiotic – if parts of one die, parts of others die with them.”

At the center of the elk issue is the lingering question of whetherelk are indigenous to regions of Texas beyond their range in theGuadalupe Mountains. Parks and Wildlife says no; Gills says yes,and points to cave paintings of elk-like figures in West Texas, earlyTexas landscape paintings that include elk, notations of elk by pre-1900 travelers and an elk bone found in a Circle Ranch cave. Thelandowner claims elk already roamed the Circle Ranch when hebought the place in 1999.

“The northeast Sierra Diablos are only 20 miles from the southwestGuadalupes, where there have always been elk,” he said. “Theanimals move around. When a friend of ours brought elk cows to afenced enclosure, the next morning male elk were on the outsidelooking in.”

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Smith agreed that academic scholarship on Texas elk before 1880is not satisfyingly complete.

“We recognize that our information is limited and we are open toany group that would like to probe that further to shore upscientific record on this,” he commented.

Gill has worked amicably with Parks and Wildlife on other issuesand both he and Smith say that will continue, despite their elkdisagreement. It would take an act of Legislature to change elk tohave game animal status, though as Gookins, from the RockyMountain Elk Foundation, points out, “that’s not likely to happennext week.”

Elk hunting in Texas on private ranches is a growing economicengine. A bull elk hunt at the Circle Ranch last year brought$10,000. Right now, public access to the Sierra Diablo WMA islimited to a very few hunts per year, mostly due to its severelandscape and wild inaccessibility. Still, said Gill, Parks and Wildlifecould parlay elk to its own financial benefit through public huntingand viewership opportunities.

“Where can a person see pronghorn, mule deer, elk and bighornsheep in the same place?” he said. “Texans can do it on public landright here in Texas.”

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