Hudson and Nietfeld looked at the effects of late-summer elk foraging rates on a mature, grass-dominant vegetation stand. Four elk were contained in a 0.15 ha plot for a 7 day period, where bite/min, steps/min and stations/min were recorded in 3, 10 minutes sessions each day. As biomass began to decline, the amount of forage consumed per bite went down, but the bite/min increased. Total forage of the 0.15-ha site went from 2637 kg/ha to 823 kg/ha within the 7 day trial. Hudson and Nietfeld suggested that elk summer grass ranges, within the boreal aspen zone, are managed to have no less than 900 kg/ha of available biomass.
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