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As of 2014, population figures for all North American elk subspecies were around one million. Prior to the European colonization of North America, there were an estimated 10 million on the continent. [78] There are many past and ongoing examples of reintroduction into areas of the US.
A cow elk moves through a wooded area. According to a recent DNA study, 240 elk were estimated to be living in Western North Carolina as of 2022.
The eastern elk (Cervus canadensis canadensis) is an extinct subspecies or distinct population of elk that inhabited the northern and eastern United States, and southern Canada. The last eastern elk was shot in Pennsylvania on September 1, 1877. [1] [2] The subspecies was declared extinct by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service in 1880. [3]
A year later, twenty-one elk from Jackson Hole, Wyoming were reintroduced to South Dakota's Wind Cave National Park for population increase. [3] 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.
Wisconsin had an estimated 515 elk in summer 2023, the most since the reintroduction began in 1995. A limited hunt is proposed for the central herd.
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As of 2021, the population has grown to 150-200 individuals and has expanded their range outside of their initial protected region. [6] In 2016, one of the elk from the North Carolina herd was spotted in South Carolina, the first time an elk had been seen in that state since the late 1700s.
To bring the elk back to the region, conservationists needed to identify 100,000 acres of viable land for the eastern elk’s closely related cousin, the rocky mountain elk.