Pennsylvania Game News - June 2013 - 7

cover animals die. Sadly, sometimes
politics had a larger role than habitat
composition in selecting release areas.
It’s easy to recognize the need for these
commonsense approaches today. But
a hundred years ago, things were very
different. Wildlife management was
just an emerging science.
The want for this reintroduction
was spurred by the extirpation of
Pennsylvania’s elk about half a century
earlier. The New York Times reported
in 1896 that the last elk was killed
in Pennsylvania by Jim Jacobs in Elk
County’s Flag Swamp in 1867. Other
records suggest that the last elk was
killed between 1863 and 1866. So it
seems a safe bet to figure our last native
elk was taken some time in the Civil
War era. Period recordkeeping makes
it impossible to nail it down any closer
than that.
Pennsylvania once had a thriving
elk population across much of the state.
But as civilization advanced consuming
elk and their habitat, the state’s elk
range retreated until it became pretty
much an Allegheny Mountains population. In their day, Pennsylvania’s native
elk had a commanding presence. Dr. B.
S. Barton reflected in the March, 1806
Medical and Physical Journal of Philadelphia, “The droves of elks which used
to frequent the salines west of the river
Susquehanna in Pennsylvania were so
great that for five or six miles leading
to the ‘licks,’ the paths of these animals
were as large as many of the great public
roads of our country. Eighty elks have
sometimes been seen in one herd upon
their march to the salines.”
Pennsylvania’s loss of elk wasn’t a
sudden event; it happened over a couple centuries. But after about 50 years
without elk, Pennsylvania — and other
JUNE  2013

states — received a proffer from the
federal government to obtain elk from
Yellowstone National Park’s burgeoning herd. All that states needed to pay
was trapping and transport costs. Dr.
Joseph Kalbfus decided Pennsylvania
ought to get in the deal being offered
by the feds.
“I believe it would be well to locate
the elk that may be received upon
those of our preserves located upon the
largest tracts of our state forestry lands,
as far as possible from cultivated lands,
and as near the center of the state as
may be, in this way giving the animals
as great a range as possible, and at the
same time, reduce to the minimum
the danger of injury to growing crops
by these animals and the possibility
of their wandering out of our jurisdiction,” Kalbfus wrote in the 1912 Chief
Game Protector Report.
Kalbfus garnered the approval of the
Board of Game Commissioners to pursue the elk reintroduction. But his plan
didn’t unfold in quite the way he had
envisioned and presented in his report.
The first shipment of 50 Yellowstone
elk was split for releases in Clinton and
Clearfield counties. An additional 22
were purchased from a Monroe County
game farm; 12 were released in Monroe
County, 10 in Centre County. Fourteen
of the 50 elk from Yellowstone died
shortly after release, apparently from
the stress of transport or their new
surroundings. Two would later be shot
illegally that year; five in 1914.
In 1915, 95 more Yellowstone elk
were released into Penn’s Woods. The
breakdown: Potter County, 24; Cameron, 24; Carbon, 24; Forest, 10; Blair,
7 and Monroe 6. Several again died
shortly after their release from stress,
which was understandable considering
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Pennsylvania Game News - June 2013

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