Pennsylvania ħ2 Rocky Mountain elk were introduced into Pennsylvania in 1913, replacing the extinct eastern elk. Not all of these elk have all the habitat to be successful in large numbers supplemental feeding programs are used to compensate for lost winter range. These initial reintroductions have expanded their range and have also been translocated within the State. Elk numbers continued to increase through the 1990s to the present.Īll Rocky Mountain elk in Washington are the result of reintroductions conducted in the early 1900s from Yellowstone elk herds. Population numbers of elk in Nebraska continued to increase through the 1970s and 1980s, to a level in which complaints from landowners in the Pine Ridge region led to the implementation of relatively liberal hunting seasons in the late 1980s. Conservation efforts also brought the elk populations in New Mexico from near-zero numbers in the late 1800s and early 1900s, to healthy populations in the 1930s in Northern New Mexico.
A year later, twenty-one elk from Jackson Hole, Wyoming were reintroduced to South Dakota's Wind Cave National Park for population increase. While overhunting is a significant contributing factor, the elk's near extinction is mainly attributed to human encroachment and destruction of their natural habitats and migratory corridors. The Rocky Mountain elk was reintroduced in 1913 to Colorado from Wyoming after the near extinction of the regional herds. The total wild population is about one million individuals. The lack of snow in Yellowstone has also given the elk an advantage over the wolves in their predator prey relationship because wolves rely on deep snow to hunt elk in winter ranges of Yellowstone. For example, in Yellowstone the climate warming has kept the snow at a lower level than in the past and has given the elk the ability to populate higher ranges than before. Climate changes such as warming have in some cases even increased the seasonal range of elk in the winter. They may even come down the mountain and leave the forest into some grassland for part of the day but head back into the timber in the evening.Ĭlimate change/warming can keep elk in their higher elevation habitats for longer into the winter than normal. Elk have a diverse habitat range that they can reside in but are most often found in forest and forest edge habitat and in mountain regions they often stay in higher elevations during warmer months and migrate down lower in the winter. In the summer it migrates to the subalpine forests and alpine basins. The winter ranges are most common in open forests and floodplain marshes in the lower elevations. The Rocky Mountain elk ( Cervus canadensis nelsoni) is a subspecies of elk found in the Rocky Mountains and adjacent ranges of Western North America.
Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.įind sources: "Rocky Mountain elk" – news Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This article needs additional citations for verification.
0 kommentar(er)
