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Humans and Elk Learning to Live with Each Other B y Mind y Riesenberg
Illustration by Meghan Bergeron
One of the reasons people visit national parks is to see wildlife in their natural habitat. At Grand Canyon, visitors may get a glimpse of animals like bighorn sheep, bats, bison, deer, ringtails, and mountain lions. But with more people visiting the park, human-wildlife interactions are increasing. And elk are right in the thick of this predicament. According to Brandon Holton, wildlife biologist at Grand Canyon National Park, elk were first observed in Grand Canyon National Park in the mid 1960s. These were Yellowstone elk that had been transplanted to eastern Arizona, Flagstaff, and Williams by the State of Arizona in the early 1900s. By the 1990s and 2000s, they became more abundant as the population surged, finding refuge in the South Rim Village and becoming habituated to humans. Because they’ve lost their natural fear of people, elk are attracted to visitor use and residential areas in the Village, typically where human-supplemented food and water resources are found. Areas of high elk use in the Village are focused at the Grand Canyon Visitor Center, the Grand Canyon School, and near the lodges. As a result, many potentially harmful elk–human interactions have occurred over the last decade, and although uncommon, injuries to visitors have been reported.
