My heart fell into my stomach as I stood in one of the tents watching the recent elk release in Cataloochee Valley on closed circuit television. At first there was no movement in the trailer. All that was seen was the rump of one animal.

Suddenly there was movement and the animals started out of the trailer. The first elk went down and my heart did too. As it was trying to get up, other elk collided with it and three or four went down, momentarily, at the trailer’s gate.

It’s a scary thing to see those large animals go down. The slender legs and ankles are suspect. I could see on the video that one of the animals that went down had a slight limp.

Later that evening I talked with Cataloochee ranger Walt West. West said that one of the animals did, indeed, have a limp. He said that it was being monitored.

Earlier that week one of the calves had to be put down at Land Between The Lakes because it had suffered a broken leg.

Nearly 900 people were in Cataloochee that Friday to witness the release. There was a general sense of elation. It seemed that everyone viewed the release as a positive event. There were several different perspectives. Many were simply in awe of these majestic creatures. Some felt a sense of history, being present at what might be the repatriation of elk into North Carolina. Some were wondering aloud how long it would be until there was a hunting season.

Of course, as far as we know, elk don’t think the way humans do. But they surely experience things. What could these elk be experiencing? Certainly, fear and stress.

In fact, the trauma suffered by wild animals subjected to capture and transport is well documented and sometimes fatal. Veterinarians and biologist refer to it as capture myopathy. There have been at least three confirmed mortalities from the 50 elk released in Royal Blue Wildlife Management Area in Tennessee this past December. Capture myopathy is thought to be responsible.

Wild animals are habitual creatures. They establish a home range which they know intimately. They feed in the same areas, drink from the same streams and/or pools and bed in the same areas. The shock of a new environment may also contribute to capture myopathy.

This is where those paradigms begin to clash. If there were a sign-up sheet or a volunteer list for elk that wanted to repopulate the Southern Appalachians, all would be fine. But that’s not the way things work. Humans decide that it would be nice to have elk again in North Carolina. Humans subject them to capture and transport, knowing that some fatalities are expected.

Don’t misunderstand. No one will be more pleased than I if these animals acclimate and establish a free roaming herd in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The ambivalence ebbs and flows as I try to establish, in my mind and heart, when we are justified in exerting our will over the creatures we share the planet with.

I can see the need to do this in the case of threatened or endangered species. Even though - in many cases - the scenario is similar and individual animals will die in the attempt to re-establish a population, the choice seems clear to me.

But elk aren’t endangered. There are healthy herds in areas where conservationists intervened before the elk were extirpated by the same type of human activities that caused the extinction of the eastern elk. We traumatize these individual creatures in the hopes that a few years from now the species will have adapted to its new environment. And we don’t know if they will. There is evidence from other relocation attempts in the east that they will, but it is still a gamble.

Paradigms clash again when the motives for these reintroductions are considered. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is primarily a hunting organization. They have the resources to support their chosen endeavor and are, no doubt, largely responsible for today’s eastern elk populations.

There is a disconnect, to me, somewhere in the rationale of creating herds of healthy, beautiful animals so one can shoot them. I look forward to the day when no elk, or any other creature, is intentionally killed in the name of sport. But I will know, five years from now, if I encounter elk in Cataloochee Valley it will be because of the support of the RMEF.

I had the privilege of going to Land Between The Lakes in Kentucky and observing the capture. I can say, unequivocally, that no matter what the dominant paradigm may have been, the well being of those elk captured was the highest priority. Kim Delozier, Steve Bloemer and the crews from the GSMNP, LBL and the University of Tennessee executed the capture beautifully.

Maybe I will be hiking in the park on a September day in the not too distant future when the shrill bugling of an elk will clear this ambivalent fog. Or perhaps it will be late October, at the edge of the park when the resounding crack of a high powered rifle will cause the fog to become suffocating.

 

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