North Carolina Let 52 Elk Into Its Dying Mountains — What Happened Next

https://vernadiscovery.com The Comeback Files: the real counts for twelve American animals that came back from almost nothing. Park managers moved 49 black bears to help elk calves survive in the Great Smoky Mountains. Then researchers checked what happened once the help stopped. In 2001 and 2002, 52 elk were brought back to Cataloochee Valley in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, North Carolina. It was one of the best-known elk reintroductions in the eastern United States. Twenty-five elk came from Land Between the Lakes on the Kentucky and Tennessee border, and 27 more came from Elk Island National Park in Alberta, Canada. The herd survived, but it grew slowly. Researchers found that black bear predation was the main cause of elk calf deaths, and the herd's growth rate was close to flat. So between 2006 and 2008, managers trapped and relocated 49 black bears from the main calving areas, just before calving season. It was a temporary experiment in wildlife management, and it raises a hard question: how do you help one native species return when another native species is eating its young? A 2011 study in the Journal of Wildlife Management measured the result. Calf recruitment, meaning the number of calves reaching one year old per adult female, rose from about 0.31 to about 0.54. A 2024 follow-up study then looked at 19 years of data, from 2001 to 2019, to see whether that improvement lasted after the bear relocations stopped. In this video you'll learn: - Why elk disappeared from the southern Appalachians and how the reintroduction was planned - What calf recruitment actually measures, and how it differs from calf survival - Why black bear predation threatened a small founding elk herd - What the 2011 and 2024 studies found, and what each does and doesn't show - What the National Park Service reported about the herd's first eight years - Why elk that spread beyond the park created new challenges for the National Park Service, the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission and the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians Verna Discovery looks at what happened after the headline. Please subscribe for more like this one! -Verna Chapters: 0:00 Intro 0:38 Bringing a missing animal home 1:25 52 elk arrive in Cataloochee Valley 1:57 What the park reported 3:18 Why bears threatened the calves 4:46 Moving 49 black bears 5:25 What the 2011 study found 6:23 What happens when the help stops 6:47 The 2024 follow-up study 8:30 Elk beyond the park 9:42 What we can take away #ElkReintroduction #SmokyMountains #WildlifeConservation