Scientists study fat content in St. Helens elk herd

Published 4:00 am Monday, March 5, 2012

MORTON, Wash. — Pat Miller surveyed a table covered with oozing elk hearts, kidneys and other organs. He pointed out globs of white fat on some of the specimens.

“Your cardiologist doesn’t want to see a lot of this, but with wild animals, we want to see a lot of fat on the heart,” said Miller a wildlife biologist for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife. The more fat, the better an elk is able to get through the winter, when food sources are harder to find.

Cutting apart elk organs and measuring their fat content is one way biologists continue to measure the health of the Mount St. Helens elk herd, The Daily News in Longview reported.

This is the third year of the elk organs project. The past couple of years, the average fat content of Mount St. Helens cow elk has been less than ideal, but not so low that it would reduce their chances of giving birth to calves.

To obtain material for their research, the biologists turn to hunters.

Last fall, hunters who drew cow tags for the Mount St. Helens herd were asked to leave body parts at WDFW hatcheries and other drop sites. The bags of organs spent the winter in deep freeze.

“We send them a packet of illustrations of what we’re looking for,” Miller said. Most hunters do pretty well in their field dissections, though sometimes the biologists have to discard a stray bit of lung that comes along with a heart.

The hunters send along notes, too. “The first one we looked at said he was doing it after dark in the pouring rain — but he did get all of it,” Miller said.

Last week, a group of 16 WDFW employees and volunteers assembled in a warehouse of the agency’s Cowlitz Wildlife Area in Morton to examine the body parts. The team included students from Washington State University and Portland State University.

The 148 returned bags of elk organs were laid out in neat rows in an unheated garage.

Scott McCorquodale, the WDFW’s statewide deer and elk specialist, called the fat counts from past years “a bit on the lean side,” though not dangerously low.