A Few Friendly Fascinating Walking Hatracks
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American Elk (Wapiti) Before European settlement, an estimated ten million elk roamed the North American continent. The American elk, or Wapiti, a Native American word meaning "white rump," once had the largest range of any deer species in North America. For centuries, the elk has been a picturesque icon of the American west and has provided recreational opportunities for hunters, photographers, artists, and other wildlife enthusiasts. Unregulated hunting, grazing competition from domestic livestock, and habitat destruction from unrestrained timber harvesting, urbanization, and westward expansion throughout the nineteenth century reduced American elk populations to less than 100,000 individuals continent-wide by the early 1900s. Fortunately, the elk's ability to use a variety of habitats, its opportunistic feeding habits, and positive response to management efforts, have returned the American elk to stable, and in some areas increasing, populations in the United States and Canada. Four subspecies of American elk live in North America today. The Tule elk, the smallest of the subspecies, once freely roamed the valleys of central and northern California. Today, many of the approximately 3,000 Tule elk that remain are managed by state and federal agencies on California public lands. The Manitoba elk once occurred primarily from Colorado north into Canada along the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountains; however, it did range east into Minnesota and south into northern Texas. Today the majority of the Manitoba elk population, approximately 20,000 individuals, are found in the provincial and national parks of Manitoba and eastern Saskatchewan, Canada. The Roosevelt elk and the Rocky Mountain elk are the largest and second largest living elk subspecies in North America, respectively. The Roosevelt elk population, approximately 91,000 strong, ranges along the Pacific coast from northern California to Washington and Canada. The Rocky Mountain elk is the most plentiful of the four elk species, 800,000 to 900,000 individuals, and occurs primarily in the mountain ranges east of the Cascade Mountains. However, because of its adaptive nature and variable diet, sustainable populations of Rocky Mountain elk have been successfully introduced or repatriated into historical habitats in many western and eastern states. Rocky Mountian elk now occur in parts of Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming. Male elk have large antlers which are shed each year. Males also engage in ritualized mating behaviors during the rut, including posturing, antler wrestling (sparring), and bugling, a loud series of vocalizations which establishes dominance over other males and attracts females. Elk are susceptible to a number of infectious diseases, some of which can be transmitted to livestock. Efforts to eliminate infectious diseases from elk populations, largely through vaccination, have had mixed success. Some cultures revere the elk as a spiritual force. In parts of Asia, antlers and their velvet are used in traditional medicines. Elk are hunted as a game species; the meat is leaner and higher in protein than beef or chicken. External links: Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (RMEF) http://www.elkfoundation.org USDA/NRCS/WHMI http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/nrcs143_022160.pdf Wikipedia http://www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elk This cache replaces GC3NTM5.
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