North Dakota hunters should be given a chance to thin the elk herd in the Theodore Roosevelt National Park, Sen. Byron Dorgan says.

"I don't think we need to hire federal sharpshooters to harvest the elk," Dorgan said Wednesday. "I think North Dakota sportsmen with a pickup truck will do just fine."

The National Park Service has been considering options to reduce elk numbers in the south unit of the park, where the animals were reintroduced in 1985. The unit can sustain about 360 elk, but officials estimate between 750 and 900 elk are there now.

Elk have multiplied rapidly in the park because there are few natural predators, hunting is not allowed inside the park, and the animals' winter survival and reproduction rates have been good. They had been taken from the park and shipped elsewhere, but that practice stopped in 2003 because of fears of chronic wasting disease.

Since 2004, the Park Service has been preparing an environmental impact statement for a proposed elk management plan.

The agency is considering several alternatives, including using teams of sharpshooters to kill elk, and a helicopter to transport carcasses to a central location. Another alternative is to use a helicopter to herd the animals into corrals, where they would be killed.

The option of allowing public elk hunts was considered and dropped, in part because it would require permission from Congress, the Park Service said.

Dorgan, D-N.D., in remarks Wednesday to the North Dakota House and Senate, said he will introduce legislation next week to allow a controlled public elk hunt in the park. His suggestion drew applause in the House.

Dorgan said in an interview afterward that the legislation will include the possibility of a public elk hunt in the Rocky Mountain National Park in north-central Colorado, which he said has a similar problem with elk overpopulation.

Hiring sharpshooters and using helicopters "is nuts. That makes no sense at all. It's as if there is a bottomless well here for the taxpayers to pay for these things," Dorgan said.

The Park Service had scheduled meetings this week in Medora and Bismarck to discuss elk management alternatives in the Theodore Roosevelt National Park's south unit, but they were canceled when the state Game and Fish Department said it would not participate.