Click the above player to hear elk bugling during the rut.
SOUTH CHARLESTON, W.Va. — It’s been more than a century since wild elk roamed free in the state of West Virginia, but they’ll be doing it again within three to four months. The West Virginia Division of Natural Resources on Friday received the signed documentation from the U.S. Forest Service to procure up to 20 elk from the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area in Kentucky. Those will become the first in West Virginia’s Elk Reintroduction plan.
“They’ve had those elk for quite a while,” said Chris Ryan, Biologist with the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources. “Originally they came from Elk Island National Park in Canada and they’ve been down there for a while. They’ve been used to stock elk in the Great Smokey Mountains National Park in North Carolina and the Cumberland Mountains in Tennessee. They’ve been used as a ‘seed source’ for a couple of different areas.”
Initially, the DNR hoped to work with the state of Kentucky to obtain elk from just across the state line in eastern Kentucky. However, Kentucky already held other commitments and West Virginia is waiting in line. Chances are the Mountain State will eventually get some of those Appalachian elk from Kentucky.
“Our elk plan calls for two stockings of 75,” Ryan said. “Whether we get exactly 75 may or may not be, but we definitely anticipate stocking more in the future.”
Plans call for eight biologists from the West Virginia DNR to travel to Land Between the Lakes in November to trap the elk and place them in quarantine for a battery of disease testing on site.
“I can’t give you an exact date yet because of the disease testing, but it will probably be sometime in late December or early January when they’re brought back,” said Ryan.
State wildlife officials will get ten bulls and ten cows to start the herd. They’ll be held in a pen on the Tomblin Wildlife Management Area in Logan County. Volunteers from the local community and the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation helped construct the holding area earlier this year. The holding area will only be used to allow the animals to recover from the trip and settle into their new home.
“We’ll hold them for a short amount of time, just so we don’t open the tailgate and they run all over the place,” Ryan explained. “It’s just to give them a chance to settle down. We won’t hold them long in Logan County.”
Where they go once the gate is finally opened is anybody’s guess. Ryan and elk project leaders are confident most of them won’t move far, but there’s never a guarantee.
“When they first moved them into Kentucky we had them actually running up here. You can’t predict what a wild animal will do,” he said. “I’m sure we’ll have a few disperse far, but we’ve also been doing habitat projects on the Tomblin WMA to try and hold the elk on that area. It’s our desire to try and have those elk stay on that area.”
DNR personnel spent the summer churning up the soil of the old surface mine sites and planting more nutritious grasses to give the elk grazing area, bordered by thick forests to diversify the habitat and keep them satisfied.
The elk are expected to have an immediate economic impact with many people desiring to see them. Kentucky businesses have grown around sight seeing tours for the animals. The possibility of elk hunting in West Virginia remains unknown, but is likely a number of years away.
“It depends on the reproductive rate,” Ryan said. “Obviously we’ll be following and studying them, but you just can’t predict when you can have a hunt when you start out with ten females.”
DNR personnel are excited about the opportunity. Most professional biologists and game managers never get the opportunity to reintroduce a species in their career. It also takes the support of the local community for a reintroduction to be successful. There has been overwhelming support for the plan in the West Virginia coalfields, the heart of what the DNR has designated as the “West Virginia Elk Zone.” It’s envisioned to eventually become an Appalachian elk herd after Kentucky’s success to the west and the successful reintroduction in Virginia to the south and east. The West Virginia coalfield counties complete a fairly wide area for elk to roam again in the central Appalachians.
“I think everybody is very excited,” Ryan added. “I think they’ll be welcomed with open arms and I think everybody is just waiting to see them.”