Kentucky Elk Once Gone, Now Thrive...And Cause Trouble

Transcript

OPEN: Frustrated residents of southeastern Kentucky are hoping attempts to curb the budding elk population will succeed--and keep elk off the roads and out of their gardens. But as the Ohio River Radio Consortium's Kristin Espeland Gourlay reports, the animal once extinct in this region is thriving.

BRUNJES: Where weíre going right now is actually a small community called Stony Fork.

ESPELAND GOURLAY: Kentucky Fish and Wildlife biologist Tina Brunjes is driving her truck along this rural Bell County road in southeastern Kentucky, where there've been several collisions between cars and elk.

BRUNJES: And theyíve kind of been sort of the epicenter of the problems that we've had with human-elk conflicts in Bell County. This road here, 2011, is where weíre going to turn to go to where the trap site was.

ESPELAND GOURLAY: The trap, she says, was set up to catch 13 particularly troublesome elk and move them about 25 miles away from the reclaimed surface mine they inhabited. That was after residents complained, and even held a recent public forum on the matter.

BRUNJES: The mine is right up here on the other side of this mountain. And they come down off the mine in the winter time and they get in these flat areas.

ESPELAND GOURLAY: The elk weren't always a problem here. They disappeared from Kentucky and most of the East a hundred fifty years ago. But Pennsylvania brought them back. Tennessee now has a tiny herd. And in 1997, Kentucky reintroduced 1500 animals, trucked in from Utah. Driving up to the old mine site, Brunjes says old surface mines ñ now open grasslands ñ make perfect elk habitat.

BRUNJES: And if it wasn't for surface mining, we would not have been able to bring elk back to eastern Kentucky, because they do not, they will not, use dense forests.

ESPELAND GOURLAY: Around a corner, she stops the truck and gets out to inspect some grazing male, or bull elk.

BRUNJES: That's not a bad bull. He knows he's the stuff.

ESPELAND GOURLAY: And he knows he's safe up here. Except of course during hunting season, these creatures have no predators. They're so safe their numbers have swelled to 10,000--far sooner than expectedómaking Kentucky's the largest elk herd east of the Dakotas. Bell County Judge Executive Albey Brock presided over the recent public forum. He says it was in part the recent string of serious car accidents that sparked public outcry. In part it was the spike in the elk population and the havoc they wreak in peopleís gardens. But another conflict brought things to a head. Kentucky Fish and Wildlife started cracking down on the community's ATV riders in order to appease the newly attracted elk hunters.

BROCK:
Fish and Wildlife treat these elk like theyíre sacred cows, quite frankly.

ESPELAND GOURLAY: But Brock acknowledges that the elk have brought some economic benefit to his community.

BROCK: The good side is, it's wonderful to have them here. Theyíre majestic animals. We have a lot of people come to our community just to see the elk.

ESPELAND GOURLAY: Along with the hunters, who pay thousands of dollars for a license and spend money at local businesses. But all the conflict begs the question: do elk belong in a landscape they havenít inhabited in more than a century? The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundationís Bill Carman thinks so.

CARMAN: Well they were here at one time, along with white-tailed deer, wild turkey, and all kinds of other animals. You know, it's neat to be able to capture that part of our history, our biology.

ESPELAND GOURLAY: The Foundation put up most of the million dollars it cost to bring back the elk. Carman says the timing was just right: some members of their board were from Kentucky, the state's Fish and Wildlife Service was willing to give it a try. Citizens seemed in favor of it. And then there was the perfect habitat: reclaimed surface mines with lots of grass for grazing and not much agriculture the elk could get into. But why elk and not some other creature, once present here? Chief ecosystem scientist for Canada's national parks Stephen Woodley says it's not always about restoring an ecosystemís integrity.

WOODLEY: Many of the reintroductions, such as things like elk and turkeys, for example, are driven by sporting interests.

ESPELAND GOURLAY: Woodley says that once you start tweaking an ecosystem, you have to be prepared to continue to manage it. In the case of the elk, that's mostly through hunting. But humans won't always be the ones doing the tweaking. A changing climate may tip the scales.

WOODLEY: You know if you looked at all the species that are going to have really negative impacts from climate change, I doubt it's the deer family.

ESPELAND GOURLAY:
Fish and Wildlife officials adjust the number of elk they allow to be hunted every year. They're taking applications until the end of April. For the Ohio River Radio Consortium, I'm Kristin Espeland Gourlay.