The New Elk on the Block
By Mary-Russell Roberson
About 2,500 elk (Cervus elaphus) live
on the Cumberland Plateau in eastern Kentucky—the
largest free-ranging elk herd in the eastern United
States. If that surprises you—well, it should.
After all, until 1997, there hadn’t been a wild
elk in Kentucky for 150 years. As many as 10 million
elk roamed the North American continent in pre-colonial
times. Their numbers began to decline after settlers
moved in and began hunting big game and clearing land
for farms. John J. Audubon wrote in 1847, “When
we first settled in the state of Kentucky [1810], some
of these animals [elk] were still to be met with; but
at present we believe none are to be found within hundreds
of miles of our…residence.”
By the early 1900s, elk survived only in remote areas of the western United States and Canada. It is the offspring of these animals that now live in Kentucky. (The subspecies that originally lived in Kentucky, C. e. canadensis, is extinct. The reintroduced elk is a western subspecies: C. e. nelsoni.) While much about Kentucky and its landscape has changed in 150 years, the new elk appear to be settling in fairly easily. And although it may be too early to judge the long-term success of the reintroduction, all signs are pointing to a healthy, growing population.
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The Kentucky elk restoration project succeeded through good planning, strong partnerships, and sound wildlife-management techniques. But nothing is ever simple or tidy in any wildlife-restoration project. In the words of David Maehr, a conservation biologist at the University of Kentucky, “No matter how well you plan, something’s going to go wrong.” It’s up for debate whether anything has actually gone wrong, but things have definitely gotten confusing. Virginia has made it legal for hunters to shoot any Kentucky elk that wander over its borders. Many states have recently enacted bans on importing deer and elk— including Kentucky. And Wisconsin has extended its deer season in an attempt to eradicate deer from a two-county portion of the state.
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An
elk bull with two cows. (Jim Leupold/ USFWS) |
The cause of all this alarm is chronic wasting disease, or CWD—a contagious neurological disease that affects deer and elk. It causes emaciation, disorientation, loss of bodily functions, and eventually, death. For decades, CWD appeared to be confined to an area centered on northeastern Colorado. Recently, however, it’s been showing up in all kinds of surprising places in the United States and Canada. And that’s got the attention of state wildlife departments, hunters, and epidemiologists across the country.
Elk Restoration
In 1996, Kentucky began looking into the idea of restocking
elk in the state. “This was an animal that was
known to live here in the past,” says Jonathan
Day, a wildlife biologist at the Kentucky Department
of Fish and Wildlife Resources (KDFWR). “We felt
it could definitely live here again; the habitat was
there; the food was there. The only thing lacking was
a natural predator, and we felt we could mimic that
with hunting.” Day says that the people of Kentucky
figured into the decision too: “People wanted
to have elk back for viewing or hunting, or for the
aesthetic pleasure of knowing the elk was back in Kentucky
after 150 years.”
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A feasibility study found that the most promising area for restoration was a 14-county area in the eastern part of the state. The 2.6- million-acre area was chosen for its high percentage of forest and low percentage of agriculture. “We wanted to avoid the very real potential to have serious conflicts with farmers,” says UK biologist, Maehr. “You get 30 elk in an area and it looks like a bulldozer has been through. They’ll eat corn. They’ll eat beans. They can wreak havoc.” The state’s department of fish and wildlife resources estimated the project would cost $1.3 million for the first three years, which would exceed their funding. Fortunately, the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (RMEF) stepped in to help. The RMEF was created in 1984 by four Montana hunters who wanted to promote the survival of elk in the United States. The nonprofit group conserves habitat, educates the public, and assists with restoration projects. In addition to providing major funding, RMEF provided guidance on where to get elk and how to transport them.
The third partner in the venture was the University of Kentucky, which provided equipment and personnel. Scientists at the university have studied the movements and mortality of the herd extensively using radio collars. Graduate students have written theses about the effect of the elk on the ecology of the region. “This is the best documented elk restoration ever done,” says Maehr.
Next, the partners began to contact other groups whose goodwill and cooperation would be a vital part of the project. Because only 20 percent of the land in the restoration zone is public land, KDFWR set up leases with private landowners (primarily coal-mining operations) to ensure access for release, research, viewing, and hunting.
To address the concerns of the Kentucky Cattleman’s Association about the elk bringing livestock diseases into the state and of the Kentucky Farm Bureau about crop damage, the partners agreed to keep the elk out of agricultural areas, rigorously test incoming elk for disease, radiocollar and monitor the first 400 elk in Kentucky, and pick up and test all dead elk that could be located.
Finally, KDFWR held a series of public hearings to educate Kentucky citizens about the project and assess public opinion. Within the 14-county restoration zone, 99 percent of those who attended the meetings favored elk restoration. Maehr sums it up when he says, “This whole thing in Kentucky has been a wonderful partnership among a bunch of different groups—private landowners, RMEF, KDFWR, and the University of Kentucky.”
Bringing Home Elk
Now, all that the project needed was some elk. “The
first thing was to find willing partners in the west
that had surplus animals, an overabundance,” says
Maehr. “That minimized the cost.” The RMEF
helped Kentucky find elk donors. The first seven elk,
from Kansas, were released in Kentucky on December 17,
1997, in front of a crowd of about 4,500 people. Over
the next several years, elk came to Kentucky from Arizona,
North Dakota, Oregon, and Utah, with Utah contributing
more than half of the total. (Elk were reintroduced
into Utah from Yellowstone National Park between 1910
and 1925; Utah now has an elk population of about 60,000.)
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An
elk bull grazes. (USFWS) |
Before getting on the trailer for the long trip to Kentucky, all animals were quarantined and tested for six different diseases—tuberculosis, brucellosis, anaplasmosis, bluetongue, Johne’s disease, and vesibular stomatitis. (There is no way to test a live elk for CWD.) “After a week, we culled out animals as being suitable or unsuitable for movement to Kentucky,” says Maehr. KDFWR’s Jonathan Day adds, “If any of them looked suspicious, we wouldn’t put them on the trailer.”
Breeding success the first year was limited due to a combination of far-wandering females, few males, and high mortality following a stressful trip across the United States. However, in subsequent years, transport mortality was sharply reduced due to improved handling in the capture pens, separating large and small animals on the trailers, and better feeding and watering en route. As the herd filled out, natural reproduction proceeded apace. Today, the herd is reproducing well and calf survival rates are good.
According to Maehr, herd-living herbivores tend to be easier to restore than solitary carnivores. Elk are fairly general in their needs. The habitat in eastern Kentucky, while much changed since the last elk lived there, is still suitable. “We call this ‘restoration’,” says Maehr, “but in fact we’re restoring them to a landscape that is new—an artifact for the human need for energy and coal mining.” Reclaimed strip mines have made for large grassy openings among patches of woodlands. “The habitat there is in many cases undistinguishable from hillsides in Montana,” says Maehr.
The original goal of the project was to release 200 elk a year for nine years (through 2006). In the first five years, more than 1,500 elk have already been released. Now, with calves born in Kentucky, the herd numbers about 2,500.
During the past two deer seasons, hunters harvested 12 elk (six male, six female) in the restoration zone. “Currently it’s on a very limited basis,” Day says. “It doesn’t have much of a biological impact but it gets people in the mode of thinking that this is an animal that will be hunted.” Each year, ten permits were awarded by lottery and two were auctioned off by conservation organizations. The auctioned permits brought in tens of thousands of dollars, money that goes back into the elk restoration program. Day says KDFWR will keep the number of elk hunted at 12 per year for the next couple of years, then increase gradually from there.
Chronic Wasting Disease Casts
a Shadow
Last November, the specter of CWD caused the
state of Kentucky to institute a ban on the import of
live cervids (deer, elk, and caribou). The ban, however,
doesn’t affect the elk restoration project because
it is ahead of schedule. “We officially decided
not to bring in extra elk last fall, primarily because
it was not necessary to spend the extra time or money
getting more animals,” says Day. “Natural
reproduction is high enough. They’re moving along
fine on their own.”
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CWD is a type of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) disease. Other TSEs are mad cow disease (in cows), scrapie (in sheep) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob (in humans). In all of these diseases, defective proteins called prions form in the brain, giving the brain a spongy appearance (hence “spongiform”). TSEs are specific to certain species or genera. Although CWD is contagious among deer, elk, and caribou, there is no scientific evidence at this point to suggest that it can spread to humans. However, several large new federally funded research projects will look more thoroughly into whether scrapie and CWD can be transmitted to humans. Research is also ongoing as to whether CWD can jump to cattle; so far cattle living with infected deer for five years have not yet contracted the disease.
In the meantime, public-health officials are warning hunters not to eat the meat of any animal that appears sick or has tested positive for CWD, and not to eat the brain, spinal cord, eyes, spleen, tonsils, or lymph nodes of any deer or elk shot in areas where CWD exists.
Since the 1960s, CWD has been found in an area in northeastern Colorado, southeastern Wyoming, and southwestern Nebraska. Recently, however, it has spread out of that area, affecting wild animals in South Dakota, New Mexico, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Saskatchewan, and captive cervids in Minnesota, Montana, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Alberta.
The first cases of CWD in wild cervids east of the Mississippi were discovered in February of last year, when three white-tailed deer shot in southern Wisconsin during the 2001 hunting season tested positive. Further testing found more CWD in three counties. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources responded by extending deer season and employing government sharpshooters in an attempt to eradicate the 25,000 to 30,000 white-tailed deer that live in the area. The department hopes the action will halt or control the spread of CWD in a state where the economy depends on deer hunting for $1 billion a year.
Several factors make CWD hard to track and harder to control. Because there is currently no way to test live animals for the disease, diagnosis requires examination of a dead animal’s brainstem. Additionally, the disease has a long incubation period, perhaps one to five years, which means it can spread undetected over large areas. A promising new study, however, indicates that live deer can be tested successfully by taking a sample of tonsil tissue in the field—a somewhat unwieldy technique in the field that is, unfortunately, not reliable for elk.
When asked if he’s worried about CWD in the Kentucky elk, Day says, “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t. But they have yet to find CWD in any animal in the herds our elk came from. I’m worried about it in the farmed deer in Kentucky and in animals coming over from Illinois.” Every Kentucky elk that dies and is found is processed and tested for CWD and other contagious diseases. None, thus far, has tested positive for CWD.
Maehr says, “If Kentucky does develop CWD it will be from somewhere else, probably through the captive population. The actual herds these elk came from were designated disease free and have maintained disease-free status.” He adds, “Whether we had elk here or not, Kentucky would have to deal with CWD.” Kentucky, like many other states, established a program last fall to test deer killed during hunting season for CWD. With results back on about a third of these Kentucky deer, none have tested positive for CWD.
The spread of CWD has not followed straight lines or expected paths. For example, how did a mule deer in southern New Mexico, far from any population of cervids, come down with CWD? How did the Wisconsin white-tailed get it? Obviously, deer and elk routinely cover a lot of ground. However, humans have played a role too, by importing and exporting deer and elk for commercial game farms.
Cervid farming is common throughout the United States. Kentucky has about 50 commercial game farms. People raise deer and elk for meat production, hunting, aesthetics, or to sell their antlers for medicinal use in Asia. Day says, “I don’t think there are very many wildlife biologists out there who enjoy seeing a wild animal behind a fence. But it is a form of alternative agriculture. With tobacco going by the wayside, most lawmakers are reluctant to cast out anything that is an enterprise. We don’t want to be seen as telling people they can’t make a living.”
Cervid farming has led to the sale and transport of animals across the United States and Canada, and around the world—animals that in some cases have been exposed to CWD. Even if it weren’t for all the importing and exporting, keeping captive deer and elk often leads to outbreaks of disease—not just among the captive animals, but among their wild cousins as well. In fact, RMEF’s Position Statement on Game Farming, states “...raising captive elk, red deer, and other cervids on private game farms in states with wild, free-ranging elk populations poses serious risks to the health and viability of those wild elk herds due to the potential of disease transmission and genetic pollution from hybridization with escaped exotic game-farm animals.” The same threats apply to wild deer.
Why are captive cervids more susceptible to contagious diseases? “No one really knows the answer to that question,” says Maehr. “There may be certain social and physiological stresses associated with captivity that increase the potential of a disease like this to arise and then be maintained in the system.” What is known is that once a disease is established in a captive population, the social nature of cervids makes it easy for the disease to jump to the wild population.
The CWD scare has at least one neighboring state wishing that Kentucky would keep its elk to itself. Virginia officials estimate that 50 to 100 Kentucky elk now live in the mountains of Virginia that border Kentucky’s restoration zone. The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries (VDGIF) has made it legal for hunters with the proper deer licenses and tags to kill elk during deer season. This past fall, Virginia hunters harvested ten elk.
Allen Boynton, wildlife biologist with the VDGIF, says, “We do allow people to hunt elk during the deer season. We are not now trying to establish an elk population in Virginia. We have not made a decision not to do that either. We are waiting to see what happens. We’re a conservative state. Always have been.”
Virginia placed a moratorium on cervid farming in the mid-1990s. (Zoos and other exhibitors were allowed a limited amount of cervid importing, and seven fallow deer farms were grandfathered in.) This action was not in response to CWD or any particular disease. “It was just our professional judgment that transporting deer and farming the deer would inevitably lead to a disease problem,” says Boynton. This fall, because of CWD, Virginia further tightened restrictions on zoos, exhibitors, and the three remaining fallow deer farms.
Boynton says, “Personally, I don’t think the likelihood is very high that the wild elk brought to Kentucky have CWD. On the other hand, because of the social behavior of elk, we are very concerned that wild elk could bring CWD from elk farms in Kentucky into Virginia.”
The KDFWR’s Day says, “Virginia has the sovereign right to make their own decisions about wildlife in Virginia. If elk wander over to Virginia and get harvested in Virginia that’s really okay because the core population in Kentucky is what’s important to the health of the Kentucky herd.”
Even in Kentucky, beginning next deer season, legal hunters can harvest elk outside of a ten-county buffer area surrounding the restoration zone. According to Day, “We told the people of Kentucky that elk would be in 14 counties in eastern Kentucky. If they get outside of there, they’re going to cause a lot of damage to crops. For the long-term success of the project we need to keep promises and worry about taking care of the elk in the elk restoration zone. Outside of that, those elk are no longer part of the Kentucky elk project.”
While biologists, epidemiologists, hunters, and state officials worry and argue about where animals go and where CWD might pop up next, the Kentucky elk have been busy doing what elk do best—foraging, traveling, mating, and birthing. By all measures, they have adapted well to their new home.
The first six years of the project have gone about as smoothly as any restoration project. What could be planned for was planned for. As for what the future holds for these Kentucky elk, no one can say. According to Day, “We’re staying vigilant and hoping for the best.
—Mary-Russell Roberson is a freelance writer living in Durham, North Carolina.
ZooGoer 32(3)
2003. Copyright 2003 Friends of the National Zoo.
All rights reserved.
