You are here

Great Smoky Mountains National Park Officials Defend Putting Down Head-Butting Elk

Share

When the elk rut comes about, elk can behave highly unpredictably. In the Cataloochee Valley of Great Smoky Mountains National Park one young bull gathered national attention last week when photos surfaced showing him repeatedly butting a photographer who was sitting on the ground.

The elk is in the news again this week, because of his death. Park officials decided they had to put down the bull because of his behavior. On Monday, park officials issued a release to explain their decision.

The decision to euthanize an animal of any kind in the park is never made lightly. Elk are iconic symbols in the Smokies, but they are also dangerous wild animals. The park provides education about elk behavior and safe wildlife viewing in a variety of ways including signage, brochures, park website, ranger-led programs, and on-site volunteers who provide information daily at Oconaluftee and Cataloochee during the calving and breeding season.

On October 20, 2013, a photographer in Cataloochee was approached by a young male elk while sitting alongside the road taking pictures. Photos and video of the encounter have been circulated widely. The elk had likely been fed by visitors and had lost his instinctive fear of humans. It associated humans with food and had been approaching visitors seeking handouts.

Did the park do anything to discourage this elk’s behavior?

Wildlife biologists use aversive conditioning techniques to haze animals that are becoming food conditioned due to visitors feeding them. These techniques usually include firing loud firecrackers, physically chasing the animal, and shooting them in the rump with bean bags or paintballs.

Between September and last week, park biologists aggressively hazed this elk 28 times to discourage it from approaching the road and visitors. They captured, sedated, tagged, and re-released it on site. This technique has proven to be much more successful than relocation because it causes the animal to associate the place and people with an unpleasant experience. The elk did not respond to attempts by biologists to change its behavior. The behavior that it learned from park visitors who had given it food had been too strongly ingrained.

By initiating physical contact with a visitor, the elk displayed an unacceptable risk to human safety. After becoming food conditioned, the elk did not respond to any attempts to keep it out of the area and away from humans. When wildlife exhibits this behavior it often escalates to more aggressive behavior creating a dangerous situation for visitors.

Why didn’t we relocate the elk or give the elk to a zoo?

The park considered relocating the elk to another public land area in North Carolina, but this was not a viable option due to the animal’s demonstrated potential to cause harm to people. If the animal had approached a child instead of an adult, the outcome for the visitor could have been very different.

The park could not release the animal to a facility that houses a captive certified herd because animals introduced into these facilities are required to have verification that they have been free of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) for the past five years. In addition, interstate transport of elk or deer is prohibited because of risk of spreading diseases such as CWD into local populations.

Do we always kill “problem” elk?

No. Elk were reintroduced to the park in 2001. In the 13 years since the reintroduction, park biologists have used aversive conditioning on a number of animals. This is the first elk that we have had to euthanize due to nuisance behavior inside the park. We treat each animal as an individual, and each situation is different. During the past few weeks a dominant bull elk near the Oconaluftee Visitor Center charged several people who were in the field area, and recently charged and damaged a vehicle. This behavior occurred during the rut season and the elk was guarding his harem. Unlike food conditioned animals that approach humans for a handout, defending a harem is natural behavior for a bull elk.

After exploring several options, the Park decided that removing the elk antlers was the best choice to protect visitors and avoid euthanizing the elk. There were no other large bull elk in the area to challenge the elk so he no longer needed the antlers for self-protection. Elk shed their antlers annually and begin regrowing them in spring. By removing the antlers, we significantly lessened the potential for physical harm and property damage.

These two incidents demonstrate the difference between offensive and defensive behavior of wildlife. The mature bull at Oconaluftee was displaying defensive behavior by defending what it perceived as a threat to its harem. The spike bull in Cataloochee was displaying offensive behavior by actively seeking contact with humans in search of food handouts and had charged visitors along the roadway multiple times. Animals displaying offensive behavior towards humans pose a greater risk to human safety.

A video of the elk butting the photographer can be seen at this site.

Comments

Another example of the dire effects of feeding the wildlife, however it appears to be a fine effort by park officals to keep from putting the animal down.


Was the photographer too close to start with? Are feeding rules being enforced or is it still hard to catch people in the act?

Might putting down a few careless or thoughtless visitors be a better idea?


Lee, from the photos/video I saw, the photograher was just sitting on the side of the road in Cataloochee and the bull walked up to him. Apparently this was just the latest incident involving the bull.


Okay, so maybe that bull was aggressive -- but I've had more than just a few experiences in which the visitors were totally at fault and I do believe that is the case in a vast majority of animal / visitor incidents.

I was kidding in that post -- but only partly.


The park's press release poses and answers the question "did the park do anything to discourage this elk’s behavior?" But my question is did the park do enough (or anything at all) to discourage the visitor's unlawful behavior that led to this? Is as much effort put into catching people for this offense as catching people for say speeding? If not why not?


Hello:

Does anyone know if feeding was ever documented? In the second paragraph, the press release states "The elk had likely been fed by visitors...". Later the press release states "The behavior that it learned from park visitors who had given it food ..." and "After becoming food conditioned,...".

I am not trying to be argumentative. I am just wanting some clarification. Thank you.

M


Perpetual seasonal -

I've only visited the Cataloochee area once during "elk season," (a year ago), so I can only make a general observation about your question, "did the park do enough (or anything at all) to discourage the visitor's unlawful behavior that led to this?"

During our visit (on an early fall weekday) cars were literally parked in every available spot along the side of the road that runs for a mile or more through the valley. There were several rangers and quite a few uniformed volunteers (the park's "elk brigade") making a concerted effort to move around the area and talk with visitors, ensure they stayed a safe distance from the elk, while also trying to avoid total gridlock with the traffic.

However, due to the vegetation and winding road, it was virtually impossible to see what people were doing along every piece of the road and adjoining fields. It would have taken a lot of staff to try to "control" every visitor in the area.

A similar situation exists with daily "elk jams" in the fall right along heavily traveled US 441 near the Oconaluftee visitor center; during several stops there in the past couple of years, there's been both NPS staff (interpreters and l.e. rangers) and uniformed volunteers trying to keep things in check with a large crowd of visitors and their vehicles spread out over a pretty large stretch of road shoulder.

I took this photo in Oct. 2011 near Oconaluftee; the ranger on the left side of the image is trying to get traffic moving again on US441 after a driver stopped right in the travel lane to look at the elk in the field off the left edge of the picture.

How much is "doing enough" in such situations? This is a big park with lots of visitors, and only so much staff to go around at any given time. I haven't spent an enormous amount of time in the Smokies, but during about half a dozen visits, I've yet to see any rangers doing obvious "traffic enforcement," (such as sitting by the side of the road running radar), but I've seen several of them trying to "manage" visitors and elk.


I believe this discussion should include whether or not the elk need to have been "reintroduced" in the first place. It is reported that they are ranging far and wide and become quite the nuisance in Cherokee. At what price did the NPS create this situation for an animal that was displaced by humans to begin with. The GRSM track record on reintroduction is specious at best. Consider the river otters, wildly successful to the detriment of local native speckled trout and then there is the famous red wolf debacle. Killed by coyotes, no breeding pair could survive. The Smokies isn't a zoo. And ultimately, it is some touristic moron who feeds these animals for which the NPS has spent so much and now has to put down. Am I the only person who sees some discrepant logic?


Add comment

CAPTCHA

This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.

Image CAPTCHA
Enter the characters shown in the image.

The Essential RVing Guide

The Essential RVing Guide to the National Parks

The National Parks RVing Guide, aka the Essential RVing Guide To The National Parks, is the definitive guide for RVers seeking information on campgrounds in the National Park System where they can park their rigs. It's available for free for both iPhones and Android models.

This app is packed with RVing specific details on more than 250 campgrounds in more than 70 parks.

You'll also find stories about RVing in the parks, some tips if you've just recently turned into an RVer, and some planning suggestions. A bonus that wasn't in the previous eBook or PDF versions of this guide are feeds of Traveler content: you'll find our latest stories as well as our most recent podcasts just a click away.

So whether you have an iPhone or an Android, download this app and start exploring the campgrounds in the National Park System where you can park your rig.