Thousands of Nebraskans who visit the Fort Niobrara National Wildlife Refuge each summer have likely seen an elk or two before launching canoes and tubes down the river.

For almost a century, the regal animals have been confined to the refuge property with an 8-foot fence.

Now federal managers want to lower the fence, phase out captive elk and allow hunting for the first time in the refuge’s 96-year history.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently completed a draft  plan to manage deer and elk on the refuge. Of the four alternatives identified in the plan, the service would prefer to reduce the elk herd  before releasing about 30 animals. They would then allow limited hunting of free-roaming deer and elk on the 19,131-acre refuge.

“This is a pretty significant change,” said Todd Frerichs, deputy project leader at the refuge.

But it’s not a done deal.

The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, the state agency in charge of wildlife management, would prefer the refuge release no elk. The agency worries the captive animals could introduce disease to wild elk populations, or they could generate complaints from landowners over crop losses, said Kirk Nelson, an assistant director of the commission.

On the other hand, the commission supports the plan to eliminate the captive herd, which state wildlife biologists have always considered a potential magnet for disease.

“We’re pretty much in favor of what they’re proposing to do,” Nelson said Wednesday. “But we’re trying to tell the service we don’t need their animals.”

The quandary would have been unimaginable in 1912, the year the refuge was started by executive order to preserve breeding grounds for native birds.

Elk had once roamed over much of Nebraska, but they had been wiped out in the state by the 1880s by unregulated hunting.

In 1913, J.W. Gilbert of Friend donated 17 elk to the refuge. The re-establishment of elk and bison were added to the refuge’s mission.

The 95 elk now behind the refuge fence are descended from the original 17.

Meanwhile, elk gradually returned to Nebraska and have established a population of about 1,400, mostly on private land in the western third of the state. The animals have done well enough that the Game and Parks Commission opened a modern hunting season on them in the 1990s and now issues about 200 permits for elk hunting.

Concerns about animal diseases, in particular chronic wasting disease, prompted the Fish and Wildlife Service to explore phasing out the captive herd, Frerichs said. If an animal in the captive herd contracted CWD, the entire herd would have to be killed.

In addition, federal and state wildlife managers say they would prefer to see a free-roaming population of elk on the refuge.

The problem is elk can feed heavily on alfalfa, crops and hay bales, a concern for ranchers and farmers who own land where the animals are thriving. Carefully managed elk hunting has been used to keep the population at a level acceptable to landowners.

So refuge managers gathered public input and worked with the state game agency to come up with the draft plan, Frerichs said. The refuge will conduct a public meeting on the plan Nov. 10 in Valentine and will accept written comments until Dec. 19 before deciding what alternative to pursue.

The preferred alternative would require refuge staff to kill 65 of the captive elk. The animals  would be slaughtered and their meat would be donated to area food pantries, Frerichs said.

The refuge would then begin replacing the 8-foot fence with a 5-foot fence, which would allow deer and elk to pass back and forth while keeping the refuge’s 350-head bison herd confined.

The management plan calls for maintaining a free-roaming elk herd of 45. As the herd grows above that number, limited hunting would be allowed.

The refuge would also seek to allow tightly regulated deer hunting on its boundaries.

If the Game and Parks Commission refuses to allow the release of confined elk, the refuge would seek a different alternative, Frerichs said.

One backup alternative calls for removing captive elk on refuge land north of the Niobrara River and dropping the fence. South of the river, the herd would remain captive.

Under the backup alternative, when the wild elk population in the area eventually hit 45, the captive herd would be eliminated, Frerichs said.

Rick Brandt of Lincoln is the Nebraska chair of the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, a nonprofit group that raises money for elk conservation. He said it’s critical for the state to protect its wild elk, so he likely would not favor releasing the fenced animals.

But he also expressed support for the refuge’s efforts to end captive herds.

“That is a double, triple, quadruple plus they’re moving forward on those plans,” he said. “Kudos to those guys.”

Reach Joe Duggan at 473-7239 or jduggan@journalstar.com.