Can we bring wild elk back to Alabama?

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Elk, one of North America’s most majestic creatures, have been gone from Alabama for two centuries, most likely since the time we became a state in 1819. 

The largest member of the deer family, they are known for their prolific antlers and bugling calls, the eerie sound bulls make during fall mating season. 

Will they ever return to Alabama? Unlikely. But, there is hope. 

Thanks to recent efforts by conservationists in Tennessee, elk reside about 180 miles from the Alabama state line in a “Tennessee Restoration Elk Zone.” Here, they can be seen at a viewing tower within the North Cumberland Wildlife Management Area.

In our first story about animals that no longer live in Alabama, we featured the potential comeback of the Raven. 

For our second story in this three-part series, we explore how our state tried to bring elk back a century ago, how Tennessee succeeded in doing just that, and what the chances are of Alabama bringing them back again.

How elk reintroduction failed in Alabama

Bringing animals back to the wild after they have been extirpated, the scientific term for disappearing from a landscape, is not easy. 

The state of Alabama’s Department of Game and Fish learned this back in 1916 when they tried to reintroduce Elk.

Described in a story published by the Department of Conservation’s online site titled the Alabama Elk Experiment, 55 elk were trapped in Yellowstone National Park and shipped by rail to Alabama.

The elk were then given to four landowners who held the elk in propagation pens in Pickens, Sumter, Tuscaloosa and Calhoun counties. Their job?  Feed and water the elk with the intention of eventually releasing them.

Numbers that will stagger the imagination

The Department had high expectations about the project. So much so they stated:

“In 10 years, they (elk) will multiply into numbers that will stagger the imagination.” 

Obviously, that didn’t happen. Instead, it began on an inauspicious start.

For example, in Tuscaloosa County, 10 of the 17 elk broke out of the fence that was holding them. Local neighbors shot a couple of them after they escaped.

In nearby Pickens County, all the elk at that location died from diseases by 1918.

In 1922, the landowners, who were called trustees at the time, reported that no elk survived in Calhoun and Tuscaloosa counties. The same was thought to be true at the other locations.

No wildlife laws in Alabama

What also made reintroduction efforts at the time all the more difficult was the lack of fish and wildlife laws in Alabama and across the country.

Marianne Gauldin, the Conservation Outreach Coordinator at Alabama Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Division told The Bama Buzz.

“Current Game and Fish laws have not always been in place. In the past, before the early 1900s, there were unregulated harvests and persecution of some wildlife species that has led to them no longer being found in areas where they were historically. Modern game and fish laws are in place to prevent that from happening again.” 

A Tennessee elk success story

Is it possible to bring elk back to Alabama today? Tennessee proved it can happen.

In the late 1990s, all the pieces were stitched together to create a place for elk. 

Case in point, a local hunting and outdoor group in Campbell County, Tennessee called the Campbell County Outdoor Recreation Association took on elk restoration as a project after learning about the benefits the creature would bring to their community from the Tennessee Wildlife Federation and other conservation groups.

There was plenty of public and private land in the North Cumberland region of the state that was made available to create an Elk Restoration Zone. Today’s zone totals 670,000 acres. 

The state agency in charge of the effort, the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency (TWRA) was all in. Together with the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Tennessee Wildlife Federation and CORA, a splendid tapestry of partnership was formed with a single goal – restore elk to Tennessee.

By 2000, TWRA began to release these majestic creatures. They came from Elk Island National Park in Canada. They were chosen because the park was far away from known cases of Chronic Wasting Disease, a devastating illness that strikes elk and deer. Within eight years, over 200 were released into the Elk Restoration Zone.

As a sign of the project’s growth and success by 2009, Tennessee opened its first hunting season.

Today, the number of elk within the zone is between 400 to 600. 

And that Elk viewing tower at North Cumberland Wildlife Management Area? It welcomes 28,000 visitors a year.

“If you can work with the landowners, especially the ones that love wildlife, and who have bought and live on the land in rural communities where the critters need that space, you can pull it off!”

Michael A. Butler, CEO, Tennessee Wildlife Federation

Elk in Alabama, a missed opportunity

Alabama and the science of reintroducing elk was not ready in 1916. Unfortunately, according to Gauldin, we have insurmountable obstacles today.

Unlike Tennessee, which has vast amounts of public land to provide habitat for Alabama, we simply don’t have enough now.

A larger concern, a century after Alabama last tried to bring elk back, is the recent emergence of Chronic Wasting Disease in the state.

“One of the ways that chronic wasting disease spreads is by translocation of deer species. So bringing another species into Alabama that could potentially threaten our white-tailed deer population is definitely not something that we would want to occur.”

Marianne Gauldin, Conservation Outreach Coordinator, Alabama Wildlife and Freshwater Fisheries Division

Lessons learned from the Alabama elk experiment

Despite the failure of Alabama’s first try at reintroducing a deer species, decades later the  Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources  saved white-tailed from becoming extirpated. 

In 1940, there were only 16,000 deer statewide. You couldn’t find deer in 57 of  Alabama’s 67 counties. After eight decades of conservation work, we now have nearly two million deer.

Same goes for wild turkey whose numbers dropped to as low as 11,000 in 1940. Today, the beautiful bird that Ben Franklin lobbied to make our national symbol, instead of the bald eagle, has a population of over 300,000 in Alabama.

In our next story we will look at apex animals that no longer live in Alabama such as the Florida Panther, Red Wolf and Indigo Snake.

We will look at the many ways they play a role in keeping our ecosystems in balance and whether they can return to the state.

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