A partnership between stakeholders in Oregon and Washington, known as the Blue Mountains Elk Initiative (BMEI), turned 35 this year. The BMEI is a collaboration between RMEF and nearly 20 other partners—including the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife (ODFW), Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW), U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, tribal nations, NGOs and private landowners and interests—with the goal of improving habitat for elk and other wildlife on 19 million acres within the Blue Mountains of northeast Oregon and southeast Washington. It’s the longest running collaboration of its kind in the nation and was a novel concept at the time of its genesis in March 1991.
“Now we use the words ‘collaborate’ and ‘collaborative groups’ freely in our agency,” said Monty Gregg, forest biologist on the Ochoco National Forest and BMEI coordinator since 2022. “But this is a massive collaboration that started long before collaboration was even cool.”
In the 35 years of BMEI’s existence, the initiative has leveraged more than $21 million to fund 445 habitat improvement and research projects that have impacted more than 560,000 acres. Forest Service emeritus research wildlife biologist Mike Wisdom helped start the initiative and spent a year going around to different agencies, tribes and interest groups to get their buy-in.
“I didn’t have an agenda necessarily, I was just there to hear their concerns and understand what they wanted from a collaborative approach to management,” he said.
The initiative remains a valuable partnership for RMEF to this day.
“With its history of collaboration, extensive project development and vetting, the BMEI stands out clearly as one that we want to be a key partner in,” said RMEF Northwest Mission Lead Leah Burgess. “BMEI is an example of proactive, collaborative management that other landscapes and communities dealing with similar issues can look to.”
One of the main issues the BMEI was created to address is conflicts with elk congregating on private farms and ranches. The initiative works to improve forage and habitat on the Umatilla, Wallowa-Whitman, Malheur and Ochoco national forests to encourage elk to stay on public lands as much as possible.
Jon Paustian, ODFW habitat biologist who has been involved with BMEI for more than 20 years, estimates that 70% of the region’s elk winter range is on private land for the area’s 58,000 elk.
“We spend a lot of time working with private landowners with elk distribution issues, with private lands damage issues, and having the ability to draw from funding sources that allow us to work on that private-public land interface is absolutely critical to the department in terms of being impactful,” he said.
This ongoing issue is a moving target as habitat changes due to disturbances like fires, making the partnership just as important today as it was 35 years ago. The BMEI allows managers to work together to tackle the issues on a large enough scale to make a difference.
“We have mapped out areas of adjacent private land where elk are tolerated and not tolerated, which allows us to know where to put our effort into,” said Robbie Piehl, acting Paulina District ranger on the Ochoco National Forest.
The BMEI optimizes effectiveness by bringing partners to the table to decide how best to apply limited funds. The BMEI operations committee must agree on priority projects. Decisions are informed by the latest science, including up-to-the minute research from the Starkey Experimental Forest.
“I’m not aware of any other grant process where projects are this heavily scrutinized,” said Paustian.
Funding is the main obstacle the initiative faces. For example, in the last two years, Forest Service funding for the coordinator position has disappeared.
“Every year it seems like we get a little bit tighter on our funding mechanisms,” said Gregg. “It’s tough, but we’re still surviving; that’s the good news.”