THE ELK ARE COMING! THE ELK ARE COMING!

Rex Burress

According to the M-R newspaper and writer Lisa M. Krieger, California seeks to consolidate the management of 22 elk herds of about 13,000 scattered in the center of the state.

Other than the Elks Club in Oroville, there are no elk animals in the area at the moment, but with the slow advancement of a herd in Glenn County, they could soon be in the Feather River foothills—IF, the present blacktail deer population accepts them, AND, if Butte farmers allow the competition for browse plants on their lands.

Therein lies the major problem of all wildlife, especially something as big as a 700 pound, two-toed ungulate elk. It 's about habitat space. Since the colonization and settlement of America, nearly every available plot of land has been claimed and occupied by agriculturalists or cities. Only parks and public lands offer protected habitat, and even that is imperiled by profit seekers.

The squeeze is on for big-animal habitat all over Earth, especially in ultra occupied Eurasia, where dinosaur-like monstrous elephants, rhinos, hippos, and big cats reign. Already mastodons and mammoths have receded from America. The era of a lushly vegetated planet that supported forests even in Antarctica has passed, unless global warming is headed that way. Climate extremes and human intervention has battered the woods of the world until the environment is giving out in many places.

The elk is the second largest member of the deer family, topped only by moose. There are several elk species, three in California, with the Roosevelt Elk [Cervus elaphus roosevelti] being the largest, found along the northwestern coast [where the Elk River runs], and they have expanded south to the little town of Elk, California for the first time. The Tule Elk frequents inland areas.

The thing about elk and all members of the deer family, is that the males shed their antlers annually, including the moose,whose 79 inch [record] spread may weight 79 pounds! What a load on your mind, and even elk antlers are up to 40 pounds.

Prior to Europeans, there were about ten million elk in all of U.S.A. Due to excessive hunting the population dropped to about 50,000. and through restocking it's up to about one million. Therein lies the fact that free-range moose and elk require a lot of forested acreage for sustainable survival, putting them in the “big-animal squeeze” for space. With so much of CA fragmented with 40 million people, a genetic bottleneck effect makes it difficult for elk to adapt and expand.

The word “elk” has a convoluted creation, first being applied to the Eurasia moose, and when settlers came to America, they named the big animal 'elk,' thinking it was a type of moose, before even seeing a real gigantic North America moose [Alces alces]. This confusion was cleared in 1606, but 'elk' remained the name for Cervus canadensis. Originally, the Shawnee and Cree Indians had named it 'wapiti,' meaning white rump. There are about six subspecies in North America, with the Roosevelt Elk the largest at about 1300 pounds, and the more common Tule Elk edging into Glenn County with the 'bull' [named stag in Europe] weighing about 750 lbs.

One of the features of elk is the haunting sound of their bugling, the male's call for females to add to his harem of a dozen or so that he protects. I have not heard the bugling of a bull elk, but I'd like to. The 'calls of the wild' are precious...the howl of the wolf...the 'trumpet' of a swan...the honk of the wild goose. Those who have heard will remember.

“A world without huge regions of total wilderness would be a cage; a world without lions and tigers and vultures and snakes and elk and bison would be,--will be-- a human zoo.”--Edward Abbey

“The river, for example, is the living symbol of all the life it sustains or nourishes—everything from ouzels to elk...” --William O. Douglas