Rocky Mountain National Park Has Too Many Elk

Located in Colorado, the Rocky Mountain National Park is where more than 3,500 elk live, despite the fact that the optimum level of the population is between 600 and 800 people. They have no predators and can sleep and eat without the necessity of going too far. Now, the administrators of the park have to lower the population levels.

For this reason, birth control was used on the cow elk and the herd has been culled. However, the issue is that the elk usually stay in the meadows and are damaging the trees which support other wildlife in that area so the park needs to do something very fast in order to diminish the elk populations.

There were some debates regarding the introduction of the gray wolf, up to 14 specimens in order to kill some of the elk and also disperse the population around the massive 415 square-mile park. The use of “fertility control” would still require the annual culling in order to keep the numbers down to a minimum. In order to provide birth control to elk, the animal needs to be tranquilized and then vaccinated.

The hunters outside of the Rocky Mountain National Park were asked not to shoot the elk that are wearing collars. The animals vaccinated with the GonaCon wore tags which advised the hunters not to eat the meat due to the reason that this vaccine may not have cleared their bodies.