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Humans and Elk – Learning to Live with Each Other
Humans and Elk
Learning to Live with Each Other
By Mindy Riesenberg
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.
Sometimes the best relationship is a long distance relationship
Distance gives us new perspective. Distance makes the heart grow fonder.
50 ft / 15 m
small mammals, birds, reptiles
100 feet = about two bus-lengthss
100 ft / 30 m
deer, elk, bison, condors
Learn more about safe viewing at wildlifedistance.org
In order to reduce and mitigate negative elk-human interactions, Grand Canyon Conservancy is partnering with Grand Canyon National Park to monitor the movements of adult elk in and near the Village to better understand their seasonal movements and the resources to which they are attracted. “This study will allow wildlife managers to better understand habituated elk ecology in a wildland/urban environment, including interactions with visitors and residents in the South Rim Village,” said Holton. “With increasing visitation, reducing wildlife/human conflicts becomes even more important.”
Since 2018, seven cow elk (females) and one bull elk (male) have been collared for study. Scientists track their movements via GPS collars, which are programmed to collect a GPS location every four hours (six locations per day) for three years. GPS locations are uplinked to satellites, which transfer real-time locations through e-mail on a daily basis. The collars are equipped with a release mechanism that is programmed to release at a specific time and day so the collars may be retrieved after three years.
As of 2020, six collared elk are still being tracked. These elk have consistently remained in the park on a year-round basis since being collared—about 98 percent of all GPS locations of the collared elk have been inside the park boundary. Not surprisingly, the highest concentration of elk in the Village occur in highuse visitor areas where humans are likely to provide food and water, whether intentionally or inadvertently (for example, gardens, grass, and increased surface water). There isn’t an exact population estimate for elk in the park, however, a genetics study conducted in 2015 indicated that there was an effective population size of about 200 elk occupying the south rim.
“This study should assist wildlife managers with their understanding of how elk are moving across the South Rim landscape and help them identify hotspots of activity and areas of potential conflict between elk and visitors,” said Holton. Ultimately, this information will help inform an elk management plan aimed at reducing direct and/or indirect human supplementation of food and water, decreasing elk attraction to high-use visitor areas and decreasing the opportunity for negative interactions between elk and humans. Scientists also hope to learn more about elk survival rates and causes of death.
One final word of advice from Holton,
Recently conserved, these vibrant American Indian murals decorate the interior of Desert View Watchtower.
Photo by John Dillon
