Seven years after the end of the Civil War, hunters killed a 500-pound elk near the Sierra Nevada’s Lake Tahoe, marking the near-final coda for a species on the edge of extinction.
It’s time for the majestic animal, now protected, to return, a new study asserts.
This ambition runs counter to the state’s official elk management plan, which contends that the animals aren’t native to the Sierra. But the research — an investigation of early explorer records, historical newspaper articles and Native American history, published this month in the journal PLOS One — concludes that the animal, although never abundant, called the region home.
As populations of elk climb around the state, there are signs that herds are beginning to creep into the mountains.
“We should ‘rewild’ the Sierra,” asserts Dr. Rick Lanman, a Los Altos-based physician-scientist and historical ecologist, who led the research. “Their steady recolonization suggests that there is suitable habitat, now and into the future.”
The state’s elk once totaled over 500,000 individuals, mostly in Central and Northern California.
But the animals — their presence enshrined in place names like Mendocino County’s town of Elk and Sacramento County’s Elk Grove — were almost completely wiped out by the late 1800s.
By the early 1900s, only two small geographic clusters of animals remained. Remnant marshlands of Kern County held a few members of one subspecies, called Tule elk. Another subspecies, called Roosevelt elk, lived in the moist forests of northern Humboldt and southern Del Norte counties.
In 1967, animals belonging to a third subspecies, Rocky Mountain elk, were shipped from Yellowstone National Park to a southern California ranch in Tehachapi, where they escaped and began multiplying.
Now, after protection and numerous reintroductions, California is home to more than 6,000 individuals, according to a paper published in January in the Journal of Wildlife Management by Benjamin Sacks, director of the UC Davis Mammalian Ecology and Conservation Unit.
And they’re beginning to roam.
Herds in the northeast are expanding their range east and south from the Cascade Range into the northern Sierra Nevada. In the mid-1980s, animals were moved from Oregon to Siskiyou and Trinity counties. Three herds currently occupy Plumas and Sierra counties; one is just 19 miles north of Lake Tahoe.
Some southern animals are heading north into the Lake Isabella area of Sequoia National Forest, climbing up to elevations of 2,500 feet.
In 2019 and 2020, scientists got word of two unexpected elk sightings in the Sierra. One was spotted south of Lake Tahoe in the Crystal Basin Recreation Area. The same adventurous elk was seen six weeks later — and 40 miles away — near Sonora Pass.
An earlier sighting, unconfirmed, was reported in another unusual location — the Stanislaus National Forest, between the Clavey and Tuolumne rivers.
Populations are climbing closer to the Bay Area, as well. In eastern Santa Clara County near Mt. Hamilton, an isolated group of Tule elk has grown from 65 to 90 animals. Point Reyes National Seashore in Marin County is home to an estimated 700 elk.
The Sierra sightings may represent a male bull elk exploring new migratory routes, according to Kristin Denryter, former coordinator of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Elk and Pronghorn Antelope Program.
This all makes perfect sense, said Lanham. Other now-protected animals, such as beaver and wolverines, are also returning to historic habitats.
A biotechnology entrepreneur with expertise in genetics and oncology, he now studies California’s “historical ecology” to boost understanding of the remnant fauna and flora of the state, such as steelhead trout and beavers.
His study, co-authored by wildlife biologists Thomas Batter and Cody J. Mckee, recounts a report of elk during a pioneering 1847 wagon train journey down Placer County’s South Fork Yuba River to Bear River Valley.
The team also tracked down newspaper accounts of elk hunts in the late 1860s and 1870s. One describes a hunt near Lake Tahoe’s Zephyr Cove; another took place in the sagebrush of the Honey Lake region, to the north of the Sierra, where “in order to save a few dollars in freight, the heads and legs were cut off of all the animals.”
To their frustration, the team has not yet found museum specimens of elk from the Sierra. Nor are there any accounts from early naturalists. Lanham speculates that museums lost specimens during earthquakes and fires. Early trappers and hunters may have rapidly depleted elk in the Sierra before the species’ presence was documented.
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But there is some ethnographic evidence. For instance, the Washoe People, who live near Lake Tahoe at the border of California and Nevada, had a word for elk: hanakmuwe. And archival interviews of the region’s Paiute and Maidu tribes describe the presence of elk.
The Department of Fish and Wildlife has not yet studied the new paper, so would not comment on it.
But “scientific insights are always evolving, and we will take these findings into consideration when we update our elk management plan,” said CDFW’s Scott Gardner.
The California Cattlemen’s Association also said it needed time to comment. In Wyoming and Minnesota, where elk populations have exploded, ranchers report fence and crop damage.
“These animals can be a nuisance and a serious challenge for livestock producers,” wrote Kaitlin Root of the Minnesota State Cattlemen’s Association.
But elk can play a positive role in reducing the vegetation that creates wildfires, said Lanham. Sightseeing tours and hunting could boost local economies. Calves could be food for wolves; dead adults could feed condors.
“They provide an important ecological function,” said Lanman. “They should be studied, protected and restored.”