The real problem throughout most of Colorado is that people built their cities and towns (as well as their ranch headquarters) on traditional big game winter range.
Not really, Lewis and Clark saw 10's of thousands of elk on the Great Plains. Most of the big game we think of as mountain dwelling were actually plains animals. People go places and develop, animals go somewhere else. It is a matter of adaptation or extinction.
That's a really ignorant post.
Mudhen was spot on.
It isn't ignorant, just an observation. Thanks to critics like you good people leave this site.
Maybe "traditional winter range" isn't really traditional.
If you'd said "traditional winter range isn't really traditional" you'd have gotten no disagreement from me.
But that's not what you said.
The fact is, that traditional winter range on the plains is no longer a viable option as winter range for the elk who now live in our mountains. The winter range that's available to them now is primarily the river valleys, and mudhen was correct in his observation that the river valleys are also the places where people are moving in and making that particular habitat unavailable.
The quality and quantity of their available winter range is also a limiting factor in their populations. So loss of that habitat is most definitely a problem. And not only a problem for the elk, since elk hunting is a big part of the rural economies hereabouts.
As far as "good people leaving the site," bullsh**. Good people know when they've made an ignorant statement and have the capacity to acknowledge the same.
