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Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation celebrates 25 years

by Brad FuquaWestern News
| September 23, 2009 12:00 AM

Through a 25-year period of incredible growth and hundreds of success stories, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation has developed a presence around the world. From the organization’s founding in 1984, membership today stands at around 150,000.

Still, the foundation remains true to its roots with Lincoln County representing one of the RMEF’s top project areas. One of the original founding members, Charlie Decker, still lives in Libby and continues to serve on the foundation’s board of directors.

“It was a miracle," Decker told the Daily Inter Lake earlier this year. “I guess timing was everything and it's still going 25 years later.”

In May 1984, Decker along with Dan Bull and brothers, Bob and Bill Munson, got together in a small office located in Troy. The region’s elk habitat was threatenend and the four hunters felt something needed to be done.

“We needed start-up money and I used my oldest son’s college fund,” Decker said. “My wife and I had saved for years. It nearly cost me a divorce.”

Munson remembers his daughters and a dozen teenage girls stuffing envelopes with mailers in a garage at his real estate office in Troy. Decker hit the road to drum up support, including a trip to Oregon to recruit a well-known bowhunter.

Each of the founders used their own savings and took out loans to print and send out 43,000 brochures soliciting members. The group said it had plans for a magazine and annual convention.

Only 233 people responded.

“It's amazing to me where we're at 25 years later,” said Bob Munson, who served as the foundation's president and chief executive officer for 15 years. “All I can say is that it was a wild ride and I'm glad I was part of it.”

The light response made the effort even more challenging. The group came up with more money and printed 32,000 copies of Bugle magazine’s first issue. New members received a copy with others going to game licensing agents, sporting goods stores and a few select newsstands.

Lance Schelvan, who worked for Kootenai National Forest in Libby, was Bugle magazine’s founding editor.

“He made from scratch the Elk Foundation’s flagship, Bugle magazine. It was pure luck for Bob and me to find a talent of this caliber,” Decker said years later when Schelvan was honored with a foundation award. “It’s really weird that he was living in Libby, Montana, because he’s as good as there is in the world.”

“Bugle was the first thing I ever did that someone other than my family saw,” Schelvan said.

By the end of 1984, membership had grown to nearly 2,500.

“I think we generated 12,000 to 15,000 members the next year, in 1985,” Munson said. “That's also the year we held our first convention in Spokane, which was another commitment.”

Decker said the organization turned the corner toward success within another year.

“Our second national convention was in Denver … we could finally pay the bills after that convention,” Decker said. “That was when I felt we were finally getting on firmer ground. Up to that point, we were on a real shoestring.”

The foundation’s first major land acquisition occurred in 1988. Anheuser-Busch had donated $500,000 toward the purchase of 16,440 acres in the Robb Creek drainage of the Snowcrest Range in southwestern Montana. An additional 16,000 acres of attached grazing leases brought the total up to more than 32,000 acres.

According to the 1998 book, “Montana Ghost Dance: Essays on Land and Life” by John Burghardt Wright, the Robb Creek acquisition meant that several hundred elk could now safely winter on the property. But on top of that, the property protected the habitat of 30 other mammal species and 57 kinds of birds.

In 1988, the staff had grown to 12 and membership stood at 32,000 with 70 chapters. The growth forced the group to relocate from Troy to Missoula, where today an impressive visitor center now stands.

The latest numbers show that 10,000 volunteers are involved with holding more than 550 fundraisers annually. Among those is the Lincoln County Big Game Banquet, scheduled for Oct. 17 in Libby.

Funds from the events have paid for more than 6,100 different conservation projects such as prescribed burns, weed treatments, forest thinning, water developments and more. Combined, those efforts now top 5.6 million acres of habitat for elk and other wildlife.

Decker summed up the key to the organization's success:

“We were focused on a magnificent animal and there was a great passion with elk hunters and conservationists,” he said. “It was a special species that warranted a bit of attention, I guess.”

Despite successes by the foundation, Decker believes the organization’s window of opportunity may be closing.

“The landscape is changing fast. The hunters who’ve always been the backbone of the Elk Foundation are declining,” Decker said. “A growing population and increasing demands on open space mean our organization needs to work at a feverish pace, and I worry about getting it all done before it’s too late.”

On the Web: Visit the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation at www.rmef.org

(Jim Mann of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell contributed to this story).

The RMEF in Lincoln County

• The foundation has funded 31 projects with nearly 30,000 acres enhanced for elk and other wildlife.

• The first-ever RMEF project involved transplanting 17 elk – including 11 calves, five cows and one bull – from the National Bison Range to the Pete Creek area in the Yaak River drainage.

• The foundation funded a cooperative, integrated noxious weed management project on 12,500 acres of high-use elk winter range within the Butler and Alder Creek drainages east of Fisher River. Partners included the Lincoln County Weed District, Plum Creek Timber Co., the Montana Department of Natural Resource and Conservation, Montana Department of Transportation and Kootenai National Forest. Spotted knapweed and other weeds were treated with herbicide and biocontrols along 39.4 miles of road.

• RMEF developed four wildlife watering sites on dry summer range supporting elk, moose, deer and other wildlife in the Libby Ranger District.

• The foundation treated more than 11,200 acres of national forest and state lands with prescribed fire to improve forage for elk, mule deer, white-tailed deer and moose.