Additional elk likely for Royal Blue WMA
GOLDEN POND, KY — Elk that were roaming the 750-acre Elk & Bison Prarie at Land Between the Lakes here a couple of weeks ago will soon be en route to the Cumberland Mountains straddling the Scott-Campbell county line, if all goes according to plan.
Several Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency employees and elk conservation program volunteers spent a span of days recently locating, darting and transporting elk at LBL, preparing to move the animals to Royal Blue Wildlife Management Area near Norma.
Harvey Hammock, a Scott County resident who volunteers for the elk restoration program, was among those making the trip to LBL.
TWRA biologist Steve Bennett, who coordinates the agency’s elk restoration program, led one of two teams locating the animals and darting them with CO2-powered guns, after which the animals were blindfolded and carried to waiting flatbed trailers using a tarp. They were then transported to a nearby enclosure, where they are currently undergoing testing for brucellosis and bovine tuberculosis.
In all, more than 40 elk have been darted and transported to the holding pens. Hammock said that as of Wednesday, two bull elk remained that had avoided capture and needed to be darted and moved to the holding pen.
By the time blooming Bradford pears are signaling the arrival of spring next month, many of those elk will likely be transported to Royal Blue, where they will join around 170-to-180 other free-roaming elk on the Cumberland Plateau. Hammock said that about 35 of the elk will be targeted for the release.
TWRA officials have not set an exact date for that release — other than saying it will occur in March — but the release will be open to the public, as each of the previous releases have been.
When the animals are released, it will mark the first release in several years for TWRA’s elk restoration program, which has been stalled by Chronic Wasting Disease concerns and government bureaucracy.
After the U.S. Department of Agriculture lifted bans on importing cervids to the U.S. following a Mad Cow scare in Canada, TWRA was prepared to import around 140 elk from Elk Island National Park in Alberta last February. However, a last-minute ruling by USDA officials crashed those plans, as the agency decided that Elk Island’s herd could no longer be certified disease-free.
That decision had been lobbied for by elk farmers, who had threatened legal action against USDA if the agency permitted TWRA to import the elk, citing a threat of CWD being introduced to the state by those elk.
The USDA’s action came about because the Canadian Food Inspection Agency determined that Elk Island no longer met the specifications of a captive herd.
With Elk Island off limits, the TWRA lost its largest source for elk since the restoration program began in 2000. Tennessee then turned to its only other source for elk, the much smaller herd at LBL. TWRA planned to import more than two dozen elk from LBL last year; however, those plans never came to fruition. With the cervids farmers — including the Kentucky Alternative Livestock Association — battling the move, Kentucky ultimately determined that elk from LBL had to meet Kentucky’s standard for captive elk herds before they could be transported.
LBL has since met those standards, and last October, TWRA agreed to meet federal tuberculosis testing requirements, which paves the way for the current planned importation of elk.