COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KOAA) — Starting December 2, Colorado Parks and Wildlife (CPW) will begin low-altitude helicopter flights to assess big game herds in southeast Colorado.
CPW says the assessments will be from Trinidad to Leadville and east of I-25.
The flights are used to learn more information about individual herds. The flights allow CPW biologists to determine how many deer, fawns, and elk calves have reached six months old, indicating the herd's health.
Collected data is used for several purposes, one being determining the number of hunting licenses for each species for the following year.
“Each year, CPW biologists inventory hundreds of thousands of animals statewide to develop a picture of the productivity and composition of big game in Colorado. The data is critical to our work of forming population models, management strategies and to set future hunting license numbers.”
There are also flights scheduled over South Park, the Upper Arkansas River Valley, the Pikes Peak Region, the Sangre de Cristo mountains, the Wet Mountain Valley, and Fishers Peak State Park in Trinidad, west of I-25.
Each flight will focus on the following;
- Leadville to Cañon City focuses on mule deer does and fawns
- Flights over the South Park area focus on elk
Contractors will use nets or tranquilizers to briefly capture elk and mule deer to place GPS collars on them, and release them for studies focused on movement and herd survival.
On the southeastern plains, there are helicopter surveys scheduled over Kit Carson and Cheyenne counties, followed by surveys over Kiowa, Prowers, and Baca counties.
Biologists are scheduled to fly over the Arkansas River and associated drainages from Pueblo to the Kansas state line to study deer, elk, and bighorn sheep.
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