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[Choke on the Magic]

Specifically relevant to me is the Missouri Elk restoration which is going great now despite the awful drought and heat we had last summer.
Elk are beautiful animals and I always am awestruck at how majestic they look everytime I go to Grants Farm or Lone Elk Park.

http://www.kcur.org/post/after-conservation-efforts-elk-herd-thriving-missouri

Missouri conservation officials say they are pleased with the way a three-year effort to restore elk to the southeastern part of the state is going.

The last group of elk arrived at the Peck Ranch conservation area this spring, bringing the total to around 100 animals.

Department of Conservation resource scientist Lonnie Hansen says the state will start controlling the population when it reaches about 400 elk.

Until then, the focus is on keeping the animals healthy.

"What we need to do is provide make sure we provide adequate food and cover for them," he says. "In other words, we’re doing some habitat management to improve the forage down there for them."

Hansen says the department is pleased with the way things are going, despite some bumps.

“One of the bumps for example was bringing them in last year and introducing them, or releasing them into drought conditions, and that was hard on them and we had a higher mortality than we’d like,” he says.

Hansen says the department will focus now on making sure the elk have adequate food at Peck Ranch. He says the conversation department will shift to management, mostly through controlled hunts, when the population reaches between 400 and 500 elk.

Some 100 elk are living in southeast Missouri after an effort to restore the species to the state

http://www.outdoorlife.com/blogs/newshound/2013/07/tk-0

The restoration isn't popular with everyone in Missouri. There are plenty of reasons why some might not want a population of elk returned to Missouri. There are pro and cons to having an elk population.
Source on the Pros and Cons:http://www.outdoorlife.com/blogs/record-quest/2011/06/11-reasons-why-you-want-elk-restored-your-statehttp://www.outdoorlife.com/blogs/record-quest/2011/06/10-reasons-you-don%E2%80%99t-want-elk-restored-your-state

PROS
1. Additional Hunting Opportunities
Lately, we hunters have been losing more than we’ve been gaining. We’ve lost habitat and places to hunt. We’ve lost animals to disease and game-changing weather. We’ve even lost fellow hunters to distractions as insidious as digital gaming and as troubling as the necessity of getting a second job. In every state where they have been restored, elk populations will be controlled with managed public hunting. Yes, the odds will be slim in early years of the hunting permit lotteries, but as herds grow, so should our opportunities to hunt elk.

2. Bugling
September’s song is about to change in southern Missouri just as it has in the coal country of eastern Kentucky. “We can’t hardly get any sleep on some of those warm September nights,” says my friend Sam Mars, who lives just over Cumberland Gap from the Bluegrass State’s bulls. “And you know what? I don’t mind it a bit.”

3. Remarkable Trophy Potential
Think a 150-class whitetail is immense? Wait ‘til you see a 380-inch bull elk. Elk antlers can grow big in every way: mass, tine length, width, but the overall impression of seeing a big mature bull will take your breath away. The adjectives that come to mind are all clichéd—majestic, royal, epic—but damned if I can come up with better ones. And maybe because they’re occupying a vacant niche, reintroduced elk tend toward trophies. In Pennsylvania last year, hunters killed a collection of record-book bulls, including a 480-inch 9x7 and a 384-inch 8x9. Those are not just big for the Keystone State. They’re big anywhere.

4. They Belong
Elk aren’t some exotic strangers. They grew up with the landscapes where they’re being relocated. It’s nice to have them back, in some cases after a two-century absence.

5. Better Than Powerball
You won’t win $1 million applying for an elk tag, but to some hunters, pulling a bull license is even better. And the odds of drawing the most coveted tags are just about as long as Powerball, so you’d better opt for the lottery that at least pays in loins and roasts and inches of antler.

6. Economic Benefit
We hunters can get behind elk restorations, but we’re hardly alone. One Pennsylvania study suggests that $18.6 million is spent annually by visitors to elk country. That is revenue spent by people who are coming to view—not to hunt—elk. Nationwide, the average wildlife-viewing tourist spends about $139 per day.

7. Habitat Benefit
Here’s one you might not expect, but elk can actually benefit the overall landscape. While whitetails tend to forage on new growth and agricultural crops, elk are often more diligent grazers, chowing down on decadent old growth in mixed woodland habitats. Their grazing patterns encourage fresh growth that’s palatable to a wide range of other species.

8. Friends of Elk
When elk come to town, so does a huge support system, and not all—or even most—of it from your state game agency. The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is committed to improving elk habitat no matter where it is, and that’s no small ally. The RMEF is on a tear lately, with somewhere north of 175,000 members in 500 chapters around the nation. The conservation organization has conserved nearly 6 million acres of habitat, and they’re actively working to bring back elk to even more of America’s landscape.

9. Immense Sheds
Remember how you showed that 90-inch whitetail shed to all your friends? Wait ‘til you find the matching set of 7x7 elk sheds.

10. Visible Herds
You might have nyala or leopards in your county, but how would you ever know? One thing about elk is that, at least in certain seasons, they’re pretty visible, and you can learn to look for them. And if the sight of a couple dozen cows gathered around a rip-snorting, fire-breathing, red-eyed herd bull doesn’t get your blood moving, you’d better take up shuffleboard.

11. Four-Foot-Long Backstraps

Cons
1. Their Appetites
Elk eat everything. Well, everything green, that is. As valley-floor farmers from Montana to New Mexico can tell you, elk don’t care if it’s high-dollar alfalfa or sugar beets or Aunt Lorna’s carnations. When they get pushed off public ground, or increasingly impaired winter range, they go where the groceries are.


2. Their Collision Potential
According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the average vehicle collision with a whitetail deer costs $8,000 to settle. The average collision with an elk is over twice that amount.


3. One, Two, a Herd
Deer live secretive, largely solitary lives. By comparison, elk are herding animals, and where you find one, you’re likely to find dozens more. That means the cumulative impact of elk can grow exponentially. That’s what residents of Stoney Fork, Kentucky discovered. According to press reports locals first welcomed elk, but now consider them pooping, depredating nuisances.


4. The Non-Hunted
Almost everywhere they are restored, elk are managed through public hunting. But it takes time to grow herds to the size where hunting can be justified. In the interim, non-hunted elk become oblivious to people, and as the folks in Stoney Fork realized, elk that hang around humans become wards of the state in the worst way, begging for handouts, loitering in public areas and generally giving wild, free-ranging elk a bad name.


5. First Elk, Then Wolves
Be careful what you wish for. The same argument that resonates so deeply with elk restoration — that they belong on the same landscapes where they evolved — also works for other, less universally desirable critters. Think elk have a place? Then so do wolves. And grizzly bears.


6. Long Odds of Hunting
Yes, elk should be (and are) managed through public hunting. But equitably distributing a handful of hunting licenses to the many thousands of applicants means that most of us will end up reading about someone else’s hunt. Are you willing to apply for 45 years for an elk license in your state with no guarantee that you’ll ever actually draw one?


7. Private Land, Public Wildlife
In the West, elk represent a really difficult management challenge. They are a public resource, but especially where they get hunted hard or hounded by wolves, they tend to gather on private land where they’re protected from hunters and predators. So how do you manage a resource without access? Montana is on the leading edge of addressing this issue, but there are no easy answers. Do you create incentives to encourage owners of these private refuges to allow public hunting? Do you herd elk off places where the public can’t hunt them? This is in a state with a large percentage of public land. The issues get only harder in states with primarily private landholdings.


8. Disease Vectors
Elk can transmit disease, not only to humans (tick-borne Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, lupus and tuberculosis) but also to livestock (Chronic Wasting Disease and brucellosis). A wide-ranging study in the West indicates that elk are probably responsible much more than bison for transmitting brucellosis to cattle. And a cattle herd infected with this disease that causes calves to abort is hard to sell, thereby reducing the value of a high-dollar agricultural commodity.


9. Colossal Distractions
Many states are struggling to maintain a sustainable whitetail herd. Now they want to add elk to the mix?


10. Interior Decorations
Finally, there’s the nettlesome issue of what to do with that trophy bull. First, the cost. Figure on up to $750 for a shoulder mount. And then where are you going to put it? A bull with 50-inch main beams takes up plenty of vertical real estate. Are you going to have to build an A-frame cabin just to accommodate your mount? Bet you didn’t think of that when you advocated restoring elk to your state, did you?

Elk haven't been in Missouri since the end of the Civil War and I personally think with proper managment the positives with easily out weigh the negatives as long as they can keep the population healthy. A diseased herd of elk could be really bad. I'm surprised also that Missouri has projected hunting in just 3 years time. I'm excited about it, but it will be a lottery most likely so it's not as if I'm guaranteed to be able to hunt them.

I made this thread not only because I'm excited about elk restoration in my region, but I'd also love to read and discuss restoration projects going on in other gaffers neck of the woods.

 

[Choke on the Magic]

I can't be the only one on GAF with a species restoration going on. Come on GAF this is stuff you usually get excited about.

 

[devon the dude]

First and only time I've seen elk was driving up the 1 towards crescent city, CA. Didn't think they were real until I saw one move. Awesome animal, would see again

 

[Choke on the Magic]

First and only time I've seen elk was driving up the 1 towards crescent city, CA. Didn't think they were real until I saw one move. Awesome animal, would see again

The western part of the country is lucky to have so much open land for them still. I didn't mention it in the OP, but you can get just about all info on elk restoration efforts and general conservation from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation.

http://www.rmef.org/