In the northern and western reaches of the U.S, 1,000-pound creatures roam the plains, forest and mountains. These horned gentle giants lumber through America’s most environmentally rich states such as Montana, Wyoming, Idaho and Nevada in search of grasses, edible tree bark and—if they should be so lucky—an unguarded apple orchard ripe for the grazing.
The Rocky Mountain elk, gargantuan cousin to the commonplace deer, has a turbulent history of once being celebrated and appreciated, then exploited and commercialized and back to being sheltered and honored.
In many indigenous traditions, the elk is viewed as a sage teacher, a survivor, a protector and a harbinger of good omens. It was, and still is, an animal appreciated for every fiber of its being from meat to antlers to hide. Its revered reputation through the years means it comes as no surprise that the elk has been the subject of an organization’s conservation efforts for nearly 40 years.
The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation
The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation (RMEF) is a combined effort by over 231,000 people—mostly hunters—to carry out meaningful, measurable, on-the-ground conservation work. Its mission is to ensure the future of elk, other wildlife, the habitats they call home and the respectful hunting heritage connected to them.
On the RMEF roster is more than 12,000 volunteers serving in 500 chapters across the nation. They donate their time, talent and funds to the effort to preserve elk habitats.
The foundation’s membership -- up to 97% of which is hunters -- is spread across the entire nation with headquarters in Missoula, Montana. RMEF has partnered with other organizations such as the U.S. Forest Service, Bureau of Land Management, fish and wildlife agencies, many landowners and other organizations to fulfill its goals.
RMEF also advocates for and is active in land and active forest management as key pillars to the support of elk and wildlife populations.
Mark Holyoak, director of communication and content for RMEF, explained that these hunters intimately know the land they’re working on and the animals they’re working with. The “on-the-ground conservation” means that RMEF volunteers are out in the wild landscapes, in the backwoods, climbing ridges and scaling mountainsides to protect the elk population.
Righting wrongs: Over-hunted elk throughout history
Hunters protecting a population of widely hunted animals may seem like an oxymoron. In truth, RMEF was founded to undo the damage done by those who hunted before them.
“Going into the 1900s, there were all sorts of issues with our wildlife population,” Holyoak said. “The numbers were down, many of them were on the verge of just going away, because they hadn’t been managed at all.”
The commercial hunting of the elk was out of control. At the time, hunters bragged about killing over a dozen elk in 10 minutes. Elk were sold by the wagonload in cities like Denver. European trophy hunters flocked to the States to claim the most appealing elk antlers and hides and left the elk meat behind to rot.
In 1899, President Teddy Roosevelt wrote that “the wilderness had been conquered and all the game killed off.” In less than 20 years, a species population that began as 10 million strong was decimated to near-extinction. An estimated 500 to 1,000 of the creatures were left.
To protect over-exploited species like the elk, the Pittman-Robertson Act was enacted in 1937. It taxed hunting equipment such as guns, ammunition and bows, and sent that tax revenue to wildlife, game and fish agencies for conservation efforts. Since its enactment, the Act has raised over $14 billion for these efforts. This tax—combined with all of the licenses and fees that hunters must pay that also fund conservation—have allowed the North American wildlife populations to flourish.
Sacred ground: Restoring the home of the elk
The RMEF volunteers in many ways—some quite unglamorous, such as clearing weeds and downed trees, planting seedlings or ripping out old barbed wire fencing—but it all boils down to taking care of the land. Cities in the West are constantly pushing out into primitive places, forcing elk and other wildlife to seek other habitats. The foundation helps to conserve those habitats for elk to thrive.
Sometimes man-made hazards are in the elks’ way; Holyoak recalled a time when a RMEF hunter came across the skull of a bull elk that had died by becoming tightly wound in an abandoned electrical line cable from an old railroad line. Upon that discovery, RMEF dispatched nearly 50 volunteers to pull those wires out of the ground after the wires had been there for decades.
RMEF volunteers clean up abandoned electrical lines after an elk died from getting tangled up in the wires. Photo courtesy of RMEF
The efforts of its volunteers define RMEF, Holyoak said.
“We appreciate them. They make us who we are,” he said. “What makes us who we are as being effective is that we see measurable success on the landscape. In 1984, there were 550,000 elk. Today there’s more than a million, and we give credit to all these volunteers and partners that we’ve worked with. We’re proud to say we’ve played a part in that growth.”
“When we’re talking about conserving land, we’re talking about protecting it,” Holyoak said. “But even more than that, when you conserve something, you make it better. When you preserve something, it’s hands-off, you let it go. But when you conserve it, you make it better.”
Sometimes that means providing funding to the Forestry Service for controlled burns on land that needs restarted from the ground up. Other times, it means clearing weeds and debris so more sunlight can reach the forest floor and support more diverse, lush vegetation—a win for elk, deer, squirrels, birds and more.
Since 1984, RMEF has enhanced 8.2 million acres of wildlife habitat. The foundation has also opened or improved access to over 1.3 million acres of public land to people who want to hunt, fish, camp or hike.
RMEF has enhanced 8.2 million acres of wildlife habitat in the U.S. since 1984. Photo courtesy of RMEF.
The majority of the land RMEF works on is in the Mountain West, but it has provided wildlife protections all across the country: throughout the Midwest and Southeast, across the Great Lakes states and into the Pacific Northwest and Desert Southwest—all areas that support a population of elk.
“We've carried out more than 13,000 projects that include land conservation and access, enhancing habitat research, promoting and supporting wildlife management, hunting and hunting heritage, as well as elk restoration,” Holyoak said. “So I think when you really look at a given organization, especially a conservation group that’s focused on wildlife and in our case a specific species, what you have done to help that specific species is kind of what it's all about.”
There are pockets of public land in America that have historically been inaccessible, often locked in by private property and impassable landmarks like rivers and mountains. One of RMEF’s goals is to work with private landowners to find a solution where the public can access and enjoy the land; recently, the foundation freed up 442 acres along the Rocky Mountain Front -- the area where the Rocky Mountains meets the plains.
That land, called the Falls Creek project and teeming with wildlife, couldn’t be accessed by hikers, fishers, campers or hunters because it was locked in by private property. Through RMEF negotiations with the landowner and the Forest Service, outdoorsmen and -women can now walk through the private land—taking nothing but photographs and leaving nothing but footprints, of course—to enjoy the public space back into the mountains, including a gorgeous waterfall and the Dearborn River.
Photo courtesy of RMEF.
“It's a really neat place,” Holyoak said. “(My family) hiked in it a couple summers ago and fished back there. It's a wild country, you have to look over your shoulder and make sure there's no grizzly bears on you. It’s a really cool and beautiful place, and that's just one example of projects that we do.”
RMEF has helped restore elk to their pre-20th century range numbers in seven states—Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and Wisconsin—as well as Ontario, Canada.
Kentucky, Holyoak said, has the largest elk herd east of the Mississippi River. In 1997, the elk population in the Bluegrass State was struggling, so RMEF provided key funding and volunteers, growing the elk population to over 14,000 in Kentucky today.
A majestic animal
Why, of all the animals worthy of protecting, did this foundation pick elk? It’s not just because of their personalities: elk make an unexpected, jarring shriek noise and are very social and even-tempered outside of mating/calf-rearing season.
A bull calls out to females during mating season. Photo courtesy of RMEF.
So when the four elk hunters who founded the RMEF were asking that same question, the answer came easily.
Deer can be found everywhere: snacking in vegetable gardens, walking through yards, giving drivers heart attacks on rural highways. Elk are a species with a majestic, wild air to them, Holyoak said.
“There were conservation groups looking after ducks, wild turkeys, lots of other wildlife. Nobody was focused on the elk,” Holyoak explained. “So they established the organization with a goal to ensure the species’ future and to protect and improve their habitat.
“The thing that’s great about conserving elk habitat is, when you do so, there’s a trickle-down effect that positively affects innumerable species: deer, bears, antelope, foxes, squirrels, fish, otters, birds, insects and vegetation. You name it. We say ‘other wildlife’ in our mission statement because the conservation work has such wide-ranging positive impacts on so many other types of living organisms.”
The RMEF’s goals include continuing to conserve habitats, fund more scientific research and improve access to public lands. The foundation is currently working on opening up access to over 15,000 acres of elk habitat in Oregon—once complete, that land will be state-owned and open to the public.
“We have projects all over the place in different states, back East, in the Midwest and otherwise," Holyoak said. "So we're just going to continue to do what we do to raise our voice on behalf of elk and other wildlife and move forward.”