Unpredictable behavior

GATLINBURG, Tenn. (WZTV) — Great Smoky Mountain National Park Service is warning visitors to keep their distance from elk in the park as breeding season is gearing up.

Elk are the largest animals in the national park, attracting visitors from all over. But as fall nears, males, or "bulls," are ready for the rut.

"This season is highly anticipated, as bulls begin to mate and make their notorious bugling calls to challenge other males," GSMNPS wrote.

During the rut, park rangers say elk behavior is unpredictable and bulls have been known to charge at people and cars.

All fields are closed to pedestrian traffic this time of year. People should stay near or inside their vehicles. Dogs should be kept on leashes.

What To Do via the GSMNPS:

• Use binoculars, a telephoto lens, or spotting scope for close-up views
• Keep at least 50 yards between you and them
• Use your thumb: Extend your arm, raise your thumb, and close one eye. If your thumb covers the entire animal, you’re a safe distance away.

Learn more about elk in the Smokie here.

Returning Elk

In the not-so-distant past, red wolves and bison roamed the Great Smoky Mountains, passenger pigeons flew en masse overhead, and Carolina parakeets chattered in the welcoming branches of American chestnut trees. 

Today, every one of those species has disappeared from the Southern Appalachian landscape — hastened along the way by the arrival of European settlers, new diseases, and new hunting and farming practices that dramatically reshaped the region’s flora and fauna.

Among the largest and most conspicuous species lost to human activity were eastern elk, a regional subspecies that vanished in the 1800s. 

But now, thanks to an ambitious project launched 20 years ago in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the resonant bugling calls of elk can be heard echoing across North Carolina’s Cataloochee Valley.

“The great pie in the sky would be to have one large, contiguous population throughout the East Coast again,” said Wildlife Biologist Joseph Yarkovich. “But that’s still way, way down the road.”

Yarkovich has spent much of his career with the National Park Service working to ensure the success of the elk’s reintroduction to the Smokies, mostly on the North Carolina side of the national park. 

After two decades of accumulating small wins, the park service is now looking to make the new herd more resilient and improve standard practices for tracking and managing reintroduced wildlife.  READ MORE