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ALL ABOUT ELK
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Elk are members of the deer family, which also includes moose and caribou.
In North America, elk once ranged as far south as Mexico and as far east as the Carolinas. Unregulated hunting and habitat loss pushed elk to the edge of extinction; by the late 1800s, populations could only be found in remote areas of the west.
Today elk have made a remarkable comeback, thanks to the efforts of
groups like the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, one of our partners in the Elk & Bison Prairie.
The elk at LBL originally came from Elk Island National Park in
Alberta, Canada. On a snowy day in late February, 1996, 29 Canadian elk were released into the Elk & Bison Prairie as hundreds of people braved the winter weather to watch. Over the next month and a half, six elk would succumb to stress-related diseases -- a result, biologists believe, of Canada's unusually harsh winter and the stress of their capture and transport to Kentucky. Unfortunately, this is a risk in wildlife reintroduction efforts.
Nature is forgiving, however. Later that spring, we were rewarded with the birth of at least two elk calves. The following December, six bull elk from Elk Island were released into the prairie. Along with the growth of our herd, came an opportunity to reintroduce elk to another area.
In February of 2001, 25 elk from the LBL Elk & Bison Prairie were transported to the Cataloochee area in the North Carolina portion of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park as part of an experimental elk reintroduction. After a temporary acclimation period in a three-acre holding pen, the elk were released into the Park.
As our elk herd in LBL grows, the animals are closely monitored using visual and radio telemetry methods. This is the first time in more than 150 years that elk have roamed our area. We hope this reintroduction is the beginning to a long existence of elk in our region.
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