Chronic wasting disease (CWD), sometimes called zombie deer disease, is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) affecting deer. TSEs are a family of diseases thought to be caused by misfolded proteins called prions and include similar diseases such as BSE in cattle, Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) in humans, and scrapie in sheep. Natural infection causing CWD affects members of the deer family. In the United States, CWD affects mule deer, white-tailed deer, red deer, sika deer, elk, bison, squirrels, antelope, caribou, and moose. The transmission of CWD to other species such as squirrel monkeys and humanized mice has been observed in experimental settings.
The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) is one of the last remaining large, nearly intact ecosystems in the northern temperate zone of the Earth. It is located within the northern Rocky Mountains, in areas of northwestern Wyoming, southwestern Montana, and eastern Idaho, and is about 22 million acres (89,000 km2). Yellowstone National Park and the Yellowstone Caldera 'hotspot' are within it.
The mule deer is a deer indigenous to western North America; it is named for its ears, which are large like those of the mule. Two subspecies of mule deer are grouped into the black-tailed deer.
The red deer is one of the largest deer species. A male red deer is called a stag or hart, and a female is called a doe or hind. The red deer inhabits most of Europe, the Caucasus Mountains region, Anatolia, Iran, and parts of western Asia. It also inhabits the Atlas Mountains of Northern Africa; being the only living species of deer to inhabit Africa. Red deer have been introduced to other areas, including Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Canada, Peru, Uruguay, Chile and Argentina. In many parts of the world, the meat (venison) from red deer is used as a food source.
The eastern elk is an extinct subspecies or distinct population of elk that inhabited the northern and eastern United States, and southern Canada. The last eastern elk was shot in Pennsylvania on September 1, 1877. The subspecies was declared extinct by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service in 1880. Another subspecies of elk, the Merriam's elk, also became extinct at roughly the same time.
The Roosevelt elk, also known commonly as the Olympic elk and Roosevelt's wapiti, is the largest of the four surviving subspecies of elk in North America by body mass. Mature bulls weigh from 700 to 1,200 lb. with very rare large bulls weighing more. Its geographic range includes temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest including parts of northern California. It was introduced to Alaska's Afognak, Kodiak, and Raspberry Islands in 1928 and reintroduced to British Columbia's Sunshine Coast from Vancouver Island in 1986.
The National Elk Refuge is a Wildlife Refuge located in Jackson Hole in the U.S. state of Wyoming. It was created in 1912 to protect habitat and provide sanctuary for one of the largest elk herds. With a total of 24,700 acres (10,000 ha), the refuge borders the town of Jackson, Wyoming, on the southwest, Bridger-Teton National Forest on the east and Grand Teton National Park on the north. It is home to an average of 7,500 elk each winter. The refuge is managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, an agency of the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Wolf reintroduction involves the reintroduction of a portion of grey wolves in areas where native wolves have been extirpated. More than 30 subspecies of Canis lupus have been recognized, and grey wolves, as colloquially understood, comprise nondomestic/feral subspecies. Reintroduction is only considered where large tracts of suitable wilderness still exist and where certain prey species are abundant enough to support a predetermined wolf population.
The elk, or wapiti, is the second largest species within the deer family, Cervidae, and one of the largest terrestrial mammals in its native range of North America and Central and East Asia. The word "elk" originally referred to the European variety of the moose, Alces alces, but was transferred to Cervus canadensis by North American colonists.
The tule elk is a subspecies of elk found only in California, ranging from the grasslands and marshlands of the Central Valley to the grassy hills on the coast. The subspecies name derives from the tule, a species of sedge native to freshwater marshes on which the tule elk feeds. When the Europeans first arrived, an estimated 500,000 tule elk roamed these regions, but by 1870 they were thought to be extirpated. In 1874–1875 a single breeding pair was discovered in the tule marshes of Buena Vista Lake in the southern San Joaquin Valley. Conservation measures were taken to protect the species in the 1970s. Today, the wild population exceeds 4,000. Tule elk can reliably be found in Carrizo Plain National Monument, Point Reyes National Seashore, portions of the Owens Valley from Lone Pine to Bishop, on Coyote Ridge in Santa Clara Valley, San Jose, California and in Pacheco State Park and areas surrounding San Luis Reservoir near Los Banos, California.
The Merriam's elk is an extinct subspecies of elk once found in the arid lands of the southwestern United States, as well as in Mexico. From the first New World arrival of Europeans, unregulated hunting, rapid growth of farms and ranches, and uncontrolled livestock grazing had driven the subspecies into extinction. Actual records on wildlife management were not reliably maintained until the late 19th century; the population of Merriam’s elk was experiencing notable decline by the beginning of the 20th century, with the (approximate) year of extinction being 1906.
The history of wolves in Yellowstone includes the extirpation, absence and reintroduction of wild populations of the gray wolf to Yellowstone National Park and the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. When the park was created in 1872, wolf populations were already in decline in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho. The creation of the national park did not provide protection for wolves or other predators, and government predator control programs in the first decades of the 1900s essentially helped eliminate the gray wolf from Yellowstone. The last wolves were killed in Yellowstone in 1926. After that, sporadic reports of wolves still occurred, but scientists confirmed in the mid-1900s that sustainable gray wolf populations had been extirpated and were absent from Yellowstone as well as 48 states.
The Alberta Mountain forests are a temperate coniferous forests ecoregion of Western Canada, as defined by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) categorization system.
The ecology of the Rocky Mountains is diverse due to the effects of a variety of environmental factors. The Rocky Mountains are the major mountain range in western North America, running from the far north of British Columbia in Canada to New Mexico in the southwestern United States, climbing from the Great Plains at or below 1,800 feet (550 m) to peaks of over 14,000 feet (4,300 m). Temperature and rainfall varies greatly also and thus the Rockies are home to a mixture of habitats including the alpine, subalpine and boreal habitats of the Northern Rocky Mountains in British Columbia and Alberta, the coniferous forests of Montana and Idaho, the wetlands and prairie where the Rockies meet the plains, a different mix of conifers on the Yellowstone Plateau in Wyoming, the montane forests of Utah, and in the high Rockies of Colorado and New Mexico, and finally the alpine tundra of the highest elevations.
The South Central Rockies forests is a temperate coniferous forest ecoregion of the United States located mainly in Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. It has a considerably drier climate than the North Central Rockies forest.
The Yellowstone bison herd roams the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The bison herd is probably the oldest and largest public bison herd in the United States, estimated in 2020 to comprise 4,800 bison. The bison are American bison of the Plains bison subspecies. Yellowstone National Park may be the only location in the United States where free-ranging bison were never extirpated, since they continued to exist in the wild and were not reintroduced.
Golestan National Park, commonly known as the Golestan Jungle, is an Iranian National Park in Golestan Province, northeastern Iran.
Antipredatory behaviors are actions an animal performs to reduce or rid themselves of the risk of being prey. Many studies have been done on elk to see what their antipredator behaviors consist of.
The conservation of bison in North America is an ongoing, diverse effort to bring American bison back from the brink of extinction. Plains bison, a subspecies, are a keystone species in the North American Great Plains. Bison are a species of conservation concern in part because they suffered a severe population bottleneck at the end of the 19th century. The near extinction of the species during the 19th century unraveled fundamental ties between bison, grassland ecosystems, and indigenous peoples’ cultures and livelihoods. English speakers used the word buffalo for this animal when they arrived. Bison was used as the scientific term to distinguish them from the true buffalo. Buffalo is commonly used as it continues to hold cultural significance, particularly for Indigenous people.
Fish and Wildlife Habitat Management Leaflet. 1999. American Elk: Cervus elaphus. United States Department of Agriculture. Habitat Management Institute.
