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2/12/13 ARE ELK NATIVE TO TEXAS? Richardson B. Gill, Christopher Gill, Reeda Peel, Javier Vasquez 2013
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Page 1: Are Elk Native to Texas?

2/12/13

ARE ELK NATIVE TO TEXAS?

Richardson B. Gill, Christopher Gill, Reeda Peel, Javier Vasquez

2013

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© Richardson B. Gill

Corresponding author:

Richardson B. Gill, PhD7707 Broadway 11ASan Antonio, Texas [email protected]

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

SUMMARY 6

INTRODUCTION 7

HISTORICAL EVIDENCE 8

PROBABLE FIRSTHAND ACCOUNTS 8

POSSIBLE SECONDHAND ACCOUNTS 14

PHYSICAL EVIDENCE 16

ELK BONES 16

ELK ANTLERS 18

ELK COPROLITE 19

ROCK ART EVIDENCE 20

ARTISTIC EVIDENCE 24

PLACE NAMES 25

TAXONOMY 26

SPECIES 27

SUBSPECIES 32

MERRIAM’S ELK 36

MERRIAM’S ELK IN TEXAS 42

SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION 43

ELK AS NATIVE ANIMALS 43

SPECIES AND SUBSPECIES 45

MERRIAM’S ELK 48

CONCLUSIONS 50

WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT IMPLICATIONS 52

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 55

REFERENCES 55

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LIST OF

1. Elk 7

2. Mule Deer 20

3. Mule Deer Pictograph 20

4. White-tailed Deer 21

5. White-tailed Deer Pictograph 21

6. Two Male Elk 22

7. Elk Pictograph 23

8. Red Elk Pictograph 22

9. Elk Petroglyph 23

10. Catlin Painting 24

11. Texas Map 46

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LIST OF TABLES

1. Elk Sightings and Reports 16

2. Elk Bones, Antlers, and Coprolite 19

3. Nelsxon Table of Data 38

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SUMMARY

Historical and archaeological evidence demonstrates that elk were native to Texas beforebeing hunted out of existence prior to 1900. The evidence includes thirteen eyewitnessaccounts and eight reports of elk in Texas between AD 1600 and 1900, four archaeologicalfinds of elk bones, two reports of elk antlers on the ground, two Native American picto-graphs, and one petroglyph of an elk. Evidence of native populations of elk were wide-spread across the State of Texas and not limited to one small area.

The first eyewitness account of elk was made by the first governor of New Mexico in 1601when he traveled along the Canadian River in the Panhandle. Subsequent reports comefrom North Texas, central Texas, and as far south as the Río Grande Valley. Secondaryreports of elk present in Texas were made by reputable persons like John James Audubon.

Elk bones have been found in archaeological contexts in North Texas, in the GuadalupeMountains, and a possible elk bone in East Texas. An elk tooth fragement was found inconjunction with the partial elk bone in the Guadalupe Mountains. Elk antlers have beenreported lying on the ground prior to 1853. There are eleven place names in Texas that useeither elk, red deer, or moose in their names, all terms used in the past to describe whattoday we call elk. Animal place names are often given for animals seen at those places.

A review of the current taxonomic status of North American elk show that they are of adifferent species, Cervus anadensis canadensis, than European red deer, Cervus elaphus. Thecurrent debate in North American elk taxonomy is whether there is only one subspecies,canadensis, in North America or whether there are one or two additional subspcies in Cali-fornia, nannodes and roosevelti. The current consensus, however, is that there is only onesubspecies in and east of the Rocky Mountains, canadensis. The initial study that identifieda different species of elk known as Merriam’s elk does not hold up to modern scientificinvestigation. The leading elk taxonomists today concur that there never was a Merriam’selk. Recent attempts to identify elk species and subspecies in North America through mor-phological studies and DNA analysis lead us to conclude that there is no evidence to sup-port the idea that the elk that lived in the Guadalupe Mountains of Texas prior to 1900were Merriam’s elk. The elk that lived in Texas in the past and the elk that live in Texastoday were of the same species and subspecies, Cervus canadensis canadensis.

The evidence presented in this paper has important implications for the management ofelk in the State of Texas. The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has instituted a policyof lethally removing elk on state lands they manage in West Texas, based on the legal sta-tus of elk as exotic animals, as codified in Texas law. TPWD maintains that elk are notnative to most of the state and that the elk that once lived in one small part of the state, theGuadalupe Mountains, were of a species, Cervus merriami, that was extirpated before 1900;thus, all elk living in Texas today are non-native, exotic animals. The historical and taxo-nomic evidence presented in this paper demonstrate conclusively that elk were native toTexas and were the same species and subspecies as the modern day elk living in the state.There are approximately 1600 free ranging elk in the mountains of West Texas today.These magnificent animals deserve the same protection as other game species.

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INTRODUCTION

Elk, Cervus canadensis canadensis, were the most widespread deer in North America. Mil-lions of elk once existed in herds of hundreds of animals, stretching from coast to coast,perhaps as many as 10 million (Seton 1953:14). By 1900, due to the ravages of market hunt-ing for hides and elk tusks (Whitehead 1972:40), sport hunting, habitat loss, and agricul-tural competition, the population had fallen to 41,000 in the United States and a fewthousand more in Canada (Nowak 1999:1113). Because of conservation efforts champi-oned, among others, by Theodore Roosevelt, elk have rebounded. By 2000, elk popula-tions in North America exceeded one million (Bauer 1999:23; Dolan 1988:11; Lyon andChristensen 2002:557–558; Toweill and Thomas 2002:793). In Texas, there are free rangingherds of elk in the Guadalupe Mountains, the Sierra Diablo, the Glass, Wylie, Eagle,Davis, and Chinati Mountains and probably others as well. The population of free-rang-ing elk in Texas in 2008 was estimated to be approximately 1,600 (Elizabeth Cary Mungall,

Figure 1. An elk or wapiti, Cervus canadensis canadensis. Note the characteristic white rumppatch. (C. canadensis canadensis). (http://cambarlow.smugmug.com/Cam-Barlow/Elk/20100927-IMG6497/1028184757_hQXit-O.jpg).

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e-mail to Richardson Gill, August 17, 2011). In addition, there are herds on private ranchesthroughout the state.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department does not believe that elk are native to Texas.They base their belief on following two presumptions:

•Elk were only native to a small area in the Guadalupe Mountains of West Texas and nowhere else in Texas.

•Elk that lived in the Guadalupe Mountains were a different, now-extinct species from the elk that live in Texas today (http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/huntwild/wild/species/elk/, accessed January 11, 2013).

But are the Department’s presumptions true? To determine the first, we will look at thehistorical and archaeological record to see past evidence of elk in Texas. To determine thesecond, we will look at recent morphological, genetic, and taxonomic studies to under-stand the current status of elk taxonomy. The answers to these questions are far moreimportant than merely an interesting historical, archaeological, and taxonomical researchproject. They have serious implications for the management and survival of this magnifi-cent animal on public and private lands in Texas.

HISTORICAL EVIDENCE

PROBABLE FIRSTHAND ACCOUNTS

The earliest written, historical sighting of elk in the State of Texas occurred in 1601. TheSpanish governor of New Mexico, don Juan de Oñate, embarked on an exploration oflands to the northeast of Santa Fe. Starting from San Juan, New Mexico, he followed theCanadian River from where it makes its turn to the east in northeastern New Mexico tojust before it makes a turn to the north on today’s Texas-Oklahoma border. Somewherebetween those two points along the Canadian River, and most likely in the Texas Panhan-dle, he described seeing a new kind of deer. He describes the deer in the sentence beforereporting his turn to the north. Historian Herbert E. Bolton believed that the turn to thenorth occurred along Commission Creek near the Antelope Hills of western Oklahoma,along the Texas border (Bolton 1916:255, 266, footnote 2). The most likely place, then, forthe strange deer to have been seen would be in the Texas Panhandle. However, Oñatesays that elk and bison were found all along the portion of the Canadian that he traveled.

This river [the Canadian] is thickly covered on all sides with these cattle[bison] and with another not less wonderful, consisting of deer which areas large as large horses. They travel in droves of two and three hundredand their deformity causes one to wonder whether they are deer or someother animal.Having traveled to reach this place one hundred and eleven leagues [617km, 383 mi], it became necessary to leave the river as there appearedahead some sand dunes; and turning from the east to the north, we

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traveled up a small stream until we discovered the great plains coveredwith innumerable cattle. (Oñate 1601:255)

In 1654, Sergeant Major Diego de Guadalajara, with a group of thirty soldiers and abouttwo hundred Christian Native Americans, traveled to the Jumano lands on the ConchoRiver. When the Spaniards wanted to proceed on their journey, the Jumano informedthem that there was a conflict that involved the Cuitoa, Excanxaque, and Ayado. Guadala-jara remained on the Concho with the Jumanos, but sent Captain Andrés López with 12soldiers to the lands 30 leagues (125 km, 78 mi) east of the Concho, where they found aranchería of the Cuitoa. The Spanish engaged the Cuitoa in battle, captured two hundredprisoners, and took two hundred bundles of deer, elk, and buffalo hides (Wade 2003:74).

The earliest definitive written sighting of elk in Texas occurred in 1759. On March 16,1758, a group of Taovayas and Comanches attacked Mission Santa Cruz de San Sabá, nearMenard, Texas, killing the priest and 18 others. In response, the viceroy ordered a puni-tive campaign against the Taovayas. The Spaniards were bent on vengeance for the mas-sacre that had occurred at the mission a year and half before. The campaign wasundertaken to attack a Taovaya settlement located on the Red River. Juan Angel deOyarzún, the captain of a company of fifty men from San Luis Potosí, joined the garrisonfrom San Sabá in a march across Texas to the Red River. Along the way he kept a diary ofthe expedition. The Spanish force departed San Sabá mission on September 7, 1759. OnSeptember 30, the troop arrived at a creek they named Arroyo de los Buros or Elk Creek justbeyond the West Fork of the Trinity River, probably in Jack County, northwest of presentday Ft. Worth. The word, buro, not to be confused with burro, or donkey, was the termused by Oyarzún to designate elk (Weddle 2007:1–11, 23–25). The entry from his diaryreads:

This day dawned cloudy and with cold winds; but the march wasundertaken in a northeasterly direction, and six leagues were traveledover plains with a few extended hills. In view from the right side weresome live-oak woods. It has grama grass and other species, green and tall,bears and many buffalo, some deer of the common kind, and the largeones called buros, rabbits, hares and many pools of rainwater.In the vicinity of one of these [ponds], camp was made today, and scoutswere dispatched to the Laguna Grande. Other measures also were takenfor protection of the horse herds and for the prompt departure of thetroop if necessary. This watering place was recognized as that of the buros[elk] for the many it maintains. This species resembles deer, although itsbody and antlers are larger. As a rule they are, when grown, like amedium-sized horse, and the antlers ordinarily attain the height of twovaras [1.7 m, 5.5 ft]. For this reason, the Comanche Indians use them tomake bows for their arrows. The color of the hair is dark bay, and becausethey shed the horns, some were found in the countryside, and one thatwe found was nearly two varas long [1.7 m, 5.5 ft] and had fourteenpoints. (Oyarzún 1759:119)

It should be noted that venado bura today refers to a mule deer, but mule deer do not have1.7 meter (5.5 ft) antlers that can be made into bows. Farther below we will see the accountof Mexican General Manuel de Mier y Terán who defines bura, using the French word forelk, élan. Clearly, the meaning of buro or bura during the Colonial period was differentfrom today and meant elk.

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Athanase de Mézières was born in Paris to a French noble family. He joined the Frencharmy in the 1730s and rose to the rank of captain. He was sent to Louisiana where he wasposted to the French outpost at Natchitoches. When Louisiana passed from French toSpanish rule, he was discharged from the French army and offered his service to the Span-ish crown. In late 1769, he was appointed lieutenant governor of Natchitoches and later,shortly before his death, governor of Texas (Chipman 2011). In 1772, he undertook anexpedition across Texas, traveling from San Antonio to Natchitoches. In describing thepart of the trip between Nacogdoches and the Sabine River, he makes the following obser-vation about the Province of Texas. Red deer, as we have seen, is one of the names used atthe time for elk.

This very large province can compete with the most fertile andproductive. It produces in abundance beans, maize, large and small stock,buffalo, deer, red deer, wild goats, turkeys, wild hogs, partridges, hares,rabbits, and other species of both quadrupeds and birds, which haveserved us in this long journey for recreations as well as for sustenance.(Athanase de Mézières 1772:309)

Pierre Vial was a remarkable pathfinder in the Spanish Southwest who was born in Lyons,France in the mid-1700s and appeared in Natchitoches and New Orleans around 1779. Hethen lived among the Taovayas on the Red River, reappearing in San Antonio in 1784, bywhich time he was known as Pedro Vial. The Spanish governor selected him in 1786 tofind the most direct route between San Antonio and Santa Fe. His diary, written in French,was delivered in 1788, to Louis de Blanc, de Mézières’s nephew and the commandant atNatchitoches. De Blanc translated it and sent a report to the Commandant of the Provin-cias Internas or Interior Provinces. In the report, de Blanc made the following statements(Loomis and Nasatir 1967:xv–xvi):

By my knowledge of [the road from] here to the Jumanos and from thediary of Vial, I advise you that [the journey from] Santa Fe toNatchitoches is easy to make in 40 days with loads, in spring andautumn….If for the royal service it should be desirable to send aid from here to NewMexico, it is indispensable to establish a post in the Taovaya villages witha good garrison and an experienced commandant to protect the road…He[Vial] also noted that the Taovayas raised corn, beans, squashes, melons,and sandillas [watermelons]; in the country, he said, were buffaloes,venados and ciervos, bears and puercos montes [wild boars]. It was a finecountry he said with rivers, fish, and lots of water, and beaver and nutrias[otters]. (De Blanc quoted in Loomis and Nasatir 1967:350)

In modern Spanish, venado and ciervo are used synonymously. However, in the 1739 edi-tion of the Diccionario de la lengua castellana de la Real Academia Española (Dictionary of theCastilian language of the Royal Spanish Academy), venado is defined as “Especie de ciervoparecido á él , casi del tamaño de un caballo. Cervus” (A kind of deer similar to it, almost thesize of a horse, Cervus,” translation ours). The words, ciervo and venado, above were usedto distinguish two different animals, one, venado, almost the size of a horse, most likely anelk, the other, ciervo, a deer. Vial was evidently referring to deer and elk. Another eyewit-ness, as we have seen, placed elk in the vicinity of the Taovaya villages thirty years earlier.

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The next recorded sighting of elk was by Ellis P. Bean, who accompanied Philip Nolan in1800 on an expedition into Texas to round up wild horses. Although some believe thatNolan was a filibuster intent on freeing Texas from Spanish rule, there appears to be littlehistorical evidence for this belief. However, the commandant of the Spanish garrison atNacogdoches so believed for he led his troops out to find Nolan. On March 21, 1801, theSpanish attacked Nolan and his 27 men at his encampment in Hill County or McClennanCounty, Texas along a tributary of the Brazos River in the Waco/Hillsboro area. Nolanwas killed by a bullet to the head during the battle (Jackson 2011a, 2011b). Bean, just 18years old at the time, was Nolan’s second-in-command and survived the engagement, butwas captured and imprisoned in Mexico (Weems 2011). In his memoirs, he recounts thefollowing:

In about six days journey, we came to Trinity river and, crossing it, wefound the big, open prairies of that country….But we found that thebuffalo had removed, and were getting so scarce, that, in three days afterpassing the spring, we were forced, in order to sustain life, to eat the fleshof wild horses, which we found in great quantities. For about nine dayswe were compelled to eat horseflesh, when we arrived at a river calledthe Brasos. Here we found elk and deer plenty, some buffalo, and wildhorses by thousands. (Bean 1816:405–406)

Dr. John Sibley was a physician from Massachusetts who moved to Natchitoches, Louisi-ana in 1802. In March, 1803, he made a journey up the Red River and, according to theHandbook of Texas Online, “from that date he became an authority on Indians of the RedRiver region and Spanish Texas.” He was appointed surgeon for the U.S. Army at Natchi-toches and later served as Indian Agent, captain of militia, parish judge, and a member ofthe Louisiana Senate (Connor 2011). In March 1804, he began a correspondence with Pres-ident Thomas Jefferson and in 1805, he wrote a description of the Indians of Louisianawhich was contained in a report that Jefferson presented to the U.S. Senate. He includedthe following comments about the Panis or Towiaches (probably the Taovayas) who livedalong the middle section of the Red River as it forms the northern boundary of Texas andformed part of the Taovaya villages (Connor 2011; Ricky 1998:319).

PANIS or TOWIACHES. The French call them Panis, and the SpaniardsTowiaches ; the latter is the proper Indian name. They live on the southbank of the Red river….

They have many horses and mules. They raise more corn, pumpkins,beans and tobacco, than they want for their own consumption ; thesurplusage they exchange with Hietans [Comanches] for buffaloe, rugs,horses and mules….they have but few guns and very little ammunition ;what they have they keep for war, and hunt with a bow. Their meat isprincipally buffaloe ; seldom kill a deer, though they are so plenty theycome into their villages and about their houses, like a domestic animal :elk, bear, wolves, antelope and wild hogs are likewise plenty in theircountry, and white bears sometimes come down amongst them, andwolves of all colours. The men generally go entirely naked, and thewomen nearly so, only wearing a small flap of a piece of skin. (Sibley1805a:47)

In a letter to General Henry Dearborn in April of 1805, Dr. Sibley further reported a con-versation that he had with Jean Brevel, who was born and raised among the Cadodaqui-

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ous, a Caddo group in North Texas. His father was stationed at a French fort named Postedes Cadodaquious, which had been established to counter Spanish intrusions into thearea. It was located in Bowie County, to the northeast of Texarkana—just south of the RedRiver or perhaps even on the Red River. The exact location has not been found. He had aFrench father and a Caddo mother (Britton 2011; Shipp 1881:665). Brevel related to Sibleya trip that he took along the Red River in the 1767 to near its headwaters and thence toSanta Fe. Dan Flores, a historian at the University of Montana, believes the story of his tripto Santa Fe to be “almost certainly a fabrication” (Flores 1984:22; Sibley 1805b:71). How-ever, as Brevel was raised in northeast Texas, either on or very near the Red River, it is rea-sonable to expect that he would be familiar with the Red River area, whether he made it toSanta Fe or not. We are inclined to accept his description of the fauna along the Red River.The confluence of the Blue and Red Rivers lies about 160 km (100 mi) west of Brevel’shome. According to Sibley’s account:

I asked him [Brevel] what animals were found in the Great prairies. Hetold me, that from Blue river, upwards, on both sides of Red river, therewere innumerable quantities of wild horses, buffaloe, bears, wolves, elk,deer, foxes, sangliers or wild hogs, antelope, white hares, rabbits, &c….(Sibley 1805:71)

Lt. Zebulon Pike, an officer in the U.S. Army and a noted explorer for whom Pike’s Peakwas named, was instructed to undertake an exploration of lands to the west and south ofthe United States, which included the provinces of New Spain. During the course of histravels, he spent the month of June, 1807 in Texas. The narrative of his expedition waspublished in 1811. His description of the Province of Texas contains the following descrip-tion of the wildlife (Pike 1811:309–325):

Animals.—Buffalo, deer, elk, wild hogs, and wild horses; the latter ofwhich are in such numbers as to afford supplies for all the savages whoborder on the province, the Spaniards, and vast droves for the otherprovinces of the United States, which find their way out, notwithstandingthe trade being contraband. (Pike 1811:331)

The next eyewitness account of elk in Texas occurred in 1841. President Mirabeau Lamarinitiated an expedition to claim parts of northern New Mexico for the Republic of Texasand to establish a new trade route to Santa Fe. George Wilkins Kendall joined the TexanSanta Fe Expedition. He was a founder of the New Orleans Picayune and is generallyregarded as the United States’ first war correspondent. He was also the father of the Texassheep industry. Kendall County in the Hill Country was named for him. On their arrivalin New Mexico, members of the expedition were captured by the Mexican army andimprisoned in Mexico. On his release, Kendall wrote a narrative of his experiences, Narra-tive of the Texas Santa Fe Expedition, which was published in 1844 and proved to be a bestseller (Cutrer 2011). The expedition left Austin on June 19, 1841, heading for the RedRiver. On July 14, they made camp half a mile from the Brazos River, probably in BosqueCounty, northwest of Waco.

Such portions of the route as had been previously explored were knownto abound with buffalo, bear, elk, antelope, and every species of game,besides fish and wild honey…. (p. 6)

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The valley of the Brazos at this place abounded with every species oftimber known in Texas; grapes, plums, and other fruit were found inprofusion; trout and other fish were plentiful in the small creeks in theneighborhood, and the woods and prairies about us not only affordedexcellent grazing for our cattle and horses, but teemed with every speciesof game—elk, deer, bears, wild turkeys, and, at the proper season, buffaloand mustang. (Kendall 1844:102)

On November 25, 1842, 700 men under the command of Alexander Somervell left SanAntonio to punish Mexico for raids into Texas by raiding and looting communities alongthe Río Grande, as the Mexican army had raided and looted communities in Texas. TheSomervell Expedition recaptured Laredo and then, with a reduced force of 500 men, tookthe town of Guerrero. Without serious backing from the Republic of Texas, Somervellordered his men to disband and return home. Five captains and 308 soldiers disobeyed,initiating the start of the Mier Expedition. They continued their march south along the RíoGrande toward Ciudad Mier. In the battle for Ciudad Mier in December, the Texans weredefeated and many were captured. In February 1843, some of the prisoners escaped andwere recaptured. Santa Anna ordered that the recaptured prisoners be decimated, thatone in ten be shot. The prisoners drew beans from a pot and those that drew black beanswere executed (Nance 2011). The white bean survivors were imprisoned in San CarlosFortress in Perote, Veracruz, also known as Perote Prison. One of the surviving soldierswho drew a white bean, William Stapp, kept a diary of his experiences.

Our whole force moved down the left bank of the Bravo [Río Grande],bearing to the east of the settlements on the river….A bright Decembermorning and a truant humour allured some comrades and myself todiverge from our line of march and try our skill in woodcraft. Besides thedroves of mustangs and wild cattle that still roam in freedom over thesedesert plains, deer, elk, turkeys, and Mexican hogs, are found inabundance wherever the hunter’s enterprise may institute a search.(Stapp 1845:27)

A. Suthron published his book, Prairiedom: Rambles and Scrambles in Texas or New Estréma-dura in 1845 in which he describes his travels in Texas and, in particular, his visit to Gen.Memucan Hunt’s ranch in central Texas. Memucan Hunt, Jr. was an important Texas rev-olutionary who held the rank of Major General in the Texas Army, was appointed Secre-tary of the Navy during the days of the Republic, then Commissioner to the United States.After annexation he was a member of the first Legislature and was later appointed a mem-ber of the U.S./Mexico Boundary Commission. He is said to have owned several landedestates (Neu 2011).

In truth, the whole district of country lying between the Trinity andBrassos, and the Brassos and Colorado, north of the San Antonio Road, isone of rare fertility and enchanting beauty….The district embracedbetween the forks of San Andrés and San Gabriel is perfectly enchanting.Gen. Hunt, late minister to the United States, &c., has a domain here ofsome twenty thousand acres [8,000 ha], which he has selected for hiscountry villa, and which well deserves to be called El Paradiso. This is thefavorite haunt of the deer, elk, and buffalo. Extensive valleys of rich,arable, alluvial lands are found throughout this range, particularly on thewater-courses. (Suthron 1845:104:105, italics in original)

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The San Andrés River is today known as the Little River. The San Andrés and the SanGabriel join together near Cameron, Texas and flow into the Brazos from the west. Thearea described above would appear to be located in central Texas, in today’s northwesternMilam County, some 30 to 50 km (20 to 30 mi) northeast of Georgetown in central Texas.

In 1849, Colonel Richard Dodge began his military career when he was posted to Fort Lin-coln in Medina County, west of San Antonio. He was a well-known hunter who huntedthroughout the western United States in what he called “the plains.” In 1877, he wrote abook about his life of hunting (Dodge 1877:426).

The range of the elk seems originally to have been commensurate withthe territory of the United States, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, fromMichigan to (Florida, I was going to say, but having no evidence of an elkever having been seen in that State, I will substitute) Texas. They are now[1877] found on the plains, in greater or less numbers, from the Britishline on the north, to the Red River on the south, from the Missouri on theeast, far beyond the plains through the Rocky Mountains to the Pacificcoast. (Dodge 1877:155)

POSSIBLE SECONDHAND ACCOUNTS

Alarmed by the short-lived Fredonian Rebellion near Nacogdoches by some Americancolonists in 1826–1827, Mexican President Guadalupe Victoria decided to send a Comisiónde Límites (Boundary Commission) to Texas to assess the situation. Victoria designated 38year old General Manuel de Mier y Terán, probably one of the most qualified men in Mex-ico, to command the expedition. Mier y Terán had fought against the Spanish in Mexico’sWar of Independence, had been a member of Mexico’s first congress, and had served asMinister of War. He departed from Mexico City on November 10, 1827 and returned in1829, but did not personally visit the Comanchería. He kept a diary of his travels (Henson2011; Jackson 2000:1–5):

SUNDAY, MARCH 1ST [1829]Under way at 8:30, the 4 leagues’ journey to the site of Santa Rosa [inCameron County near Brownsville]….We have seen many deer in herds.Some of them are of the species verrendo [pronghorn], as they call themhere. The species Elán [elk] of the genus ciervo they call Bura, and they arefound in the interior of Tejas where the Comanches live. (Mier y Terán1828:158, italics in the original)

The term, elán, is defined in Nuevos elementos de historia natural (New elements of naturalhistory), published in Madrid in 1837, as “El vapiti, elán ó ciervo del Canadá (C. canadensis),”in other words, wapiti or elk (Salacroux and Rodrigo 1837:247, italics in the original).Comanches moved south into central Texas in the 1740s and by the time of Mier y Terán’svisit could be found from the Panhandle in the north through the Llano Estacado and theSouth Plains, throughout the Hill country, to the Balcones Escarpment in the south.

George Bonnell was a native New Yorker who came to Texas in 1836 to fight in the TexasRevolution. He moved to Austin in 1839 and went into the printing business. He wasselected the government printer for the Republic of Texas and founded the Texas Sentinel.In 1841, he joined the Santa Fe Expedition. He was captured by the Mexican Army,

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imprisoned, and released in time to join the Mier Expedition in 1842. He was capturedagain and, this time, he was shot. His book, Topographical Description of Texas, was pub-lished in 1840.

A few miles south of the Los Olmos commences a sandy barren ridge,known by the name of the Wild Horse Desert….About two miles south ofthis desert, and in the edge of one of the most beautiful and fertile prairiesin Texas is the celebrated salt lake [Sal del Rey, a few miles north ofEdinburg in Hidalgo County, about thirty miles from the RíoGrande]….This lake is surrounded by the best stock raising country in theworld, and the wild cattle, horses, deer, and elk resort to it in thousands.(Bonnell 1840:110–111)

Mary Austin Holley, a cousin of Stephen F. Austin, came to Texas in 1831 and decided towrite a book that would encourage immigration. She reported in 1836 that “the moose isalso found, but is confined to the frontier or far west” (Holley 1836:99). In 1841, ArthurIkin, a native of Great Britain who had been appointed consul in London by the Republicof Texas, visited Texas to deliver treaties negotiated between the Republic and Great Brit-ain and the Netherlands. Later that year he published a book about Texas in which herelates the following: “Among and beyond the mountains, moose, a species of antelope,and wild sheep, are said to be common” (Ikin 1841:41; Sims 2011). As we saw earlier, theterms, moose and elk, were used interchangeably to denote today’s elk. In fact, moose wasthe preferred term among Britons to denote elk.

The legendary naturalist, John James Audubon, first visited Texas in 1837 with his son,also a naturalist, John Woodhouse Audubon. His son returned to Texas in 1845–1846 togather specimens for his father’s pioneering book, The viviparous quadrupeds of North Amer-ica. Audubon and his co-author, John Bachman, wrote the following in 1851, the year ofAudubon’s death:

It [the elk] is found on the western prairies, and ranges along the easternsides of the mountains in Texas and New Mexico. It is also found inOregon and California. Its most southern geographical range still remainsundetermined. (Audubon and Bachman 1851:94)

Captain L. Sitgreaves, a topographical engineer in the U.S. Army, wrote a report of anexpedition he made down the Zuñi and Colorado Rivers, which was published in 1853. Init, he catalogues the wildlife he encountered along the way. What he refers to as Elaphuscanadensis would today be known as Cervus canadensis or elk.

ELAPHUS CANADENSIS, Ray.—The American Elk.Cervus Canadensis, Ray Syn. Quad., p. 84.Cervus Strongyloceros, Schreber Saugt., vol. 2, p. 1074, pl. 247, fig. G.Cervus Canadensis, Godman. Nat. Hist., vol. 2, 294.Elaphus Canadensis, Aud. and Bach. Quad N. A., vol. 2, p. 84, pl. 62.

I have only observed this animal in the Indian Territory, but it extends itsrange into Texas, New Mexico, and California. (Sitgreaves 1853:56)

The Texas Almanac of 1867 reported:

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In the north-west and at present unsettled portions of our State are still tobe found, in the fall and winter, large numbers of the grandest andstateliest of all the four-footed game of this continent—the buffalo. Lastwinter they were abundant a short distance west of Fort Belknap, inYoung County, and a party of hunters who went out in their pursuit brought into and sold in the marketlarge quantities of both tongues and skins. Indigenous to the same regionis to be found the black-tailed deer and elk, although neither are nowabundant…. (Durham 1867:92)As we saw earlier, Vernon Bailey noted in 1905 that “there are no wild elkin the State of Texas, but years ago, as several old ranchmen have told me,they ranged south to the southern part of the Guadalupe Mountains,across the Texas line” (Bailey 1905:60).

In summary, between 1600 and 1900, we find repeated written accounts, most of whichwere eyewitness accounts, of elk in Texas beginning with Oñate’s probable sighting in thePanhandle, to reports of elk along the Red River, to the sightings of elk along and near theBrazos River around Waco, to northeast of Georgetown in central Texas on Gen. Memu-can Hunt’s ranch, to Bonnell’s and Stapp’s descriptions of elk near the Río Grande inSouth Texas, to the sightings of elk in the mountains of West Texas. (See Table 3, page 38.)After 1870, however, there are no additional eyewitness sightings that we have found,except for the Guadalupe Mountains in West Texas. Sport hunting and undoubtedly mar-ket hunting took their toll on the elk in most of Texas by 1870. By 1900, there were nonative elk left anywhere in Texas.

PHYSICAL EVIDENCE

Additional evidence for the presence of resident elk populations in Texas is physical evi-dence in the form of bones, antlers, and coprolites. Such evidence has been found in NorthTexas, West Texas, and probably southeast Texas.

ELK BONES

During excavations carried out in 1934 and 1935 in Williams Cave at the Adolphus Wil-liams Ranch in the Guadalupe Mountains—now within Guadalupe Mountains NationalPark in Culberson County—Mary Youngman Ayer reported finding a bone fragment anda tooth fragment in 1935 which she identified as belonging to an elk. It should be noted

Table 1 (opposite). Sightings or reports of elk in Texas between 1600 and 1900. The years are the dates of the actual sightings, if known, or the date of publication (p). The date 1880 for the old ranchmen sighting is the midpoint of the range 1870 to 1890 which is our estimate based on Bailey’s 1905 report of sightings “years ago.”

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Region Year Person Approximate location Fauna

Panhandle 1601 Oñate Canadian River Elk, bison

North Texas 1759 Oyarzún Jack County Elk, deer, bison, bears

1767 Brevel Red River Elk, deer, bison, horses

1788 Vial Taovaya Villages Elk, deer, bison, bears

1803 Sibley Red River Elk, deer, bison, antelope

1841 Kendall Bosque County Elk, deer, turkeys, bear

1867 Durham Young County Elk, bison, deer

Central Texas 1654 Guadalajara McCulloch County Elk, deer, bison hides

1801 Bean Hill/McClennan Counties Elk, deer, bison

1844 Suthron Milam County Elk, deer, bison

East Texas 1772 de Mézières Nacogdoches/Shelby Cts. Red deer, deer, bison

South Texas 1840 Bonnell Hidalgo County Elk, deer, horses, cattle

1842 Stapp Starr County Elk, deer, horses, cattle

West Texas 1836 Holley West or Far West Moose

1841 Ikin Mountains of Texas Moose, antelope, sheep

1851p Audubon Mountains of Texas & NM Elk

1880 Old Ranchmen Guadalupe Mountains Elk

Texas 1807 Pike Province of Texas Elk, deer, bison, horses

1829 Mier y Terán Interior of Tejas Elk

1853p Sitgreaves State of Texas Elk

1877p Dodge State of Texas Elk

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Guadalupes without regard to today’s state borders. In her article, Ayer reported the fol-lowing:

19. Cervus merriami Nelson, referred. Arizona Wapiti.Fragment of a molar (A.N.S. 14204). Proximal end of ulna (A.N.S. 14218)Remarks: The molar is too small a fragment to identify with any certaintybut it indicates a very large tooth typical of the Elk. The ulna is very largeand broad, the articulation facets for the humerus and radius are typicalof the Elk. As Cervus merriami did at one time occur in the Guadalupes itseems best to refer these fragments to that form.Geographical Distribution (Recent): Formerly found in the White Mountainsof Arizona and the mountains of western New Mexico.Pleistocene Distribution: ? (Ayer 1936:612, question mark in the original)

In a report by Jeff Homburg at the Columbus Bend Project in 1983 in Colorado County,East Texas, he reported finding lithic flakes, tested cobbles, split cobbles, bifaces, bifacefragments, points (dart and arrow points), ground-stone, hammer-stone, fire-crackedrock, mussel shell, deer bone, and a probable elk bone (Homburg 1983).

On April 17, 1993 Russell Pfau found the distal end of the tibia of an elk embedded in thebank of a small tributary of Pony Creek, north-northeast of Seymour in Baylor County,Texas, about 55 km (35 mi) south of the Red River. Pfau reported the find in 1994. It wasradiocarbon dated to 295 ±50 YBP or AD 1655 ±50, but he does not indicate that the date wascalibrated. If it was an uncalibrated date, then the calibrated 1σ date range would be calAD 1617–1673. He reported it as the first find of an elk bone in Texas, unaware of Ayres’searlier 1935 find or Homburg’s find (Pfau 1994:1; Russell Pfau, e-mail to Richardson Gill,July 2, 2011).

In a 1994 unpublished archaeological report, Brian Shaffer reported the find of a proximalphalange of an elk from the Spider Knoll site, Cooper Lake project, an Early Caddo Indianarchaeological site in Delta County, northeast Texas. The site is located 40 km (25 mi)south-southwest of Paris, about 55 km (35 mi) south of the Red River. The bone was radio-carbon dated to cal AD 970–1430 (Shaffer et al. 1995:159).

ELK ANTLERS

As we saw earlier, Captain Juan de Oyarzún found a set of elk antlers in 1759, approxi-mately in Jack County northwest of Ft. Worth, which he said were two varas long (1.7 m,5.5 ft). (Oyarzún 1759:119).

In 1853, Charles De Morse, the longtime owner and editor of the Clarksville Standard inRed River County in northeast Texas, one of the most important newspapers in Texas atthe time, traveled to Fort Worth. In an editorial comment in the March 28, 1853 issue of theClarksville Standard, he related that “At Worth, we found in the line of curiosities a wildcat, a pet bear, some stone coal from Belknap, and an immense pair of Deer’s antlerspicked up on the Grand Prairie [Dallas County], probably four feet in length [1.2 m, 1.4varas]” (De Morse quoted in Weniger 1997:49; Wallace 2011).

Other archaeological reports in the Texas Historical Commission Archeological Sites Atlas(http://nueces.thc.state.tx.us/) mention finding large mammal bones, larger than deer,

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which they did not identify. The following is a sample of descriptions drawn from there-ports in the Texas Historical Commission database:

Large deer or bison, Bones larger than deer, Large mammal bone, deer – buffalo?, ?deer and larger animal, Larger than deer, Unidentified large animal, Bones (larger than deer), Artiodactyl bones.

There is no way to know without further study of the bones whether any of these bonesare elk or not. But, it does raise the question whether some elk bones have been misidenti-fied as deer or other animals—inasmuch as the current belief is that elk were not native toTexas—and whether some of the unidentified large bones may, in fact, be elk bones.

ELK COPROLITE

In the High Sloth Caves within Guadalupe National Park in Culberson County, WestTexas, Thomas Van Devender and his colleagues unearthed a number of coprolites, par-ticularly sloth dung. “The sloth dung in Cave C-08 is associated with fecal pellets of alarge artiodactyl (possibly Cervus merriami) which have been dated at 11,760 ±610 BP,” cal12,636–10,975 BC. This is a different cave from where the elk bone and tooth fragmentswere found (Van Devender et al. 1977).

Region Year Person Approximate location Find

North Texas 1759 Oyarzún Jack County Elk antlers

1853 De Morse Dallas County Elk antlers

1993 Pfau Baylor County Elk bone

1994 Shaffer et al. Delta County Elk bone

Southeast Texas 1983 Homburg Colorado County Probable elk bone

West Texas 1934 Ayer Guadalupe Mountains Elk bone, tooth

1974 Van Devender Guadalupe Mountains Possible elk coprolite

Table 2. Elk bones, antlers, and coprolite found in Texas.

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ROCK ART EVIDENCE

Native Americans left us additional artistic evidence of the presence of elk in Texas intheir rock art. The principal difficulty in identifying elk in West Texas rock art is to distin-guish between elk, mule deer, and white-tailed deer. Many of the painted figures haveantlers, but it is difficult to say whether they are deer or elk. However, it is possible toidentify some examples of rock art as probably either deer or elk.

Mule deer have a distinctive branching pattern in their antlers, dichotomous branching, inwhich the tines of the antlers fork and the forks fork, as can be seen in Figure 2. Therearepictographs which demonstrate the same dichotomous branching pattern in the ant-lers, as seen in Firgue 3. Note that the antlers fork and the forks then fork.

White-tailed deer can often be distinguished in the rock art as well. White-tailed antlersgrow forward of their base and curve inward as they grow up, as can be seen in Figure 4.The points rise vertically from the main beam and the deer are often represented withraised tails. The antlers in Figure 5 from Terrell County have points that rise vertically

Figure 2. A mule deer (Odocoileus hemio-nus). (Photo courtesy Rocky MountainNational Park, used with permission. http://www.nps.gov/romo/naturescience/mule_deer.htm).

Figure 3. Mule deer pictograph from theSierra Vieja, Presidio County, Texas. (Photo© Reeda Peel, used with permission.)

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from the main beam without forking. The horns curve inward and are not carried downthe back. The curved, standing tail is also characteristic of white-tailed deer.

Elk, on the other hand, have a different branching pattern in their antlers. They have along main beam which grows above the head with a slight inward curve, and from whichthe points rise vertically, generally without forking, as seen in Figure 6. The famous RedElk from the Lower Pecos Canyonlands, Figure 8, has a long beam with a slight inwardcurve from which the points rise vertically. There is a rising, curving line visible near therear end of the elk. The line has been interpreted by some to be a tail, but a close examina-tion shows that the tail does not connect to the body and if the arc of the body were con-tinued up it would pass to the left of the curved line. The Red Elk was painted over olderrock art and the curved line appears to be related to the other lines to the right rather thanto the body of the elk.

In another 2,000 to 4,000 year old Pecos River Style pictograph from the Lower Pecos Can-yonlands, Figure 7, we can see the same pattern, a long beam with straight, rising points.The body does not have a raised tail, which is characteristic of elk. There is a petroglyph of

Figure 4. A white-tailed deer (O. virginianus).(Photo courtesy Informed Farmers, adaptedfrom http://informedfarmers.com/handling-whitetails-part-iii/, used with permission.)

Figure 5. White-tailed deer pictograph fromTerrell County, Texas. (Photo © Reeda Peel,used with permission.)

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an elk from Dickens County in the South Plains, east of Lubbock, as seen in Figure 9.There is no way to date the petroglyph to establish its age.

Other Native American pictographs exist that could be interpreted as elk. In fact, somepictographs have been named elk by other researchers. We have refrained from includingthem, because of the difficulty of distinguishing whether they are truly elk or deer.

Figure 6. Male elk, C. canadensis canadensis(Photo adapted from http://upload.wikime-dia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9d/Rocky-mountain-elk.jpg).

Figure 7. Elk pictograph, 2,000 to 4,000 yearold Pecos River Style rock art from theLower Pecos Canyonlands, Val Verde County,Texas. Note that the body lacks a tail. (Photo© Reeda Peel, used with permission.)

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Figure 8. The famous Red Elk, Red Mono-chrome Style rock art from the Lower PecosCanyonlands, Val Verde County, Texas.(Photo by Jim Zintgraff © Witte Museum.adapted from http://www.rockart.org/gallery/rock12.html, used with permission.)

Figure 9. Elk petroglyph, Dickens County,Texas. (Photo © Wyman Meinzer, used withpermission.)

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ARTISTIC EVIDENCE

George Catlin painted four paintings of elk, three of which he titled in a catalog publishedin London as being paintings of elk in Texas. (See Figure 10.) Many have assumed thatCatlin actually saw the elk first hand in Texas. Unfortunately, we do not. In 1834, Catlinjoined a regiment of dragoons from Fort Gibson, Arkansas that was making a patrol of thewestern part of Indian Territory to look for kidnapped settlers. The dragoons camped atthe confluence of the False Washita River (now known simply as the Washita River) andthe Red River, under today’s Lake Texoma. In a letter written in 1834, Catlin relates

We are, at this place, on the banks of the Red River, having Texas underour eye on the opposite bank. Our encampment is on the point of land

Figure 10. “Elk and Buffalo Making Acquaintance, Texas,” 1846–1848. Catlin’s painting pur-ports to depict an encounter among elk and buffalo in Texas, but it is unlikely Catlin ever trav-eled to the interior of Texas or saw elk in Texas. Anatomically, the elk appear to be Europeanred deer. The painting was painted in Catlin’s studio in Paris. In a catalogue Catlin published inLondon in 1848, the painting is entitled “Elk and Bison Making Acquaintance in a Texan Prairieon the Brazos” (Catlin 1848:60, no. 581). (Photo from the Smithsonian American Art Museum.http://americanart.si.edu/collections/search/artwork/?id=4048, used with permission.)

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between the Red River and False Washita rivers, at their junction; and thecountry about us is a panorama too beautiful to be painted with a pen….(Catlin 1841:45, letter number 39)

Catlin never indicates that he crossed the Red River and traveled farther south into Texas.In fact, in a later letter he says that he became ill while camped on the Red River and wasbarely able to keep up with the soldiers as they headed west, traveling between the RedRiver and the Washita. He later wrote a letter from a camp they made on the CanadianRiver, possibly in the Panhandle of Texas, which he called “Camp Canadian, Texas.”However, historian Edward Everett Dale, longtime chairman of the history department atthe University of Oklahoma from 1924 to 1942, maintained that the regiment of dragoonsthat Catlin was traveling with never crossed into Texas, but stayed in Indian Territory thewhole time. It is reasonable to believe that a U.S. Army regiment would have tried toavoid an armed invasion of Mexico. At one point on the march, Catlin relates that theysaw a party of Comanches in the distance and worried that they might be Mexican cavalrysoldiers, because of the shining metal lances they carried. Their worry confirms that theymay have believed they were in Texas, a part of Mexico at the time. If, in fact, they didmake camp on the Canadian River in the Texas Panhandle, as Catlin claims, it seems fromhis letters that it would have been his only foray into Texas on the 1834 trip (Catlin1841:45ff., letters number 39–41, 44).

Years later, in another letter he claims to have spent the winter on the Florida and TexasGulf Coasts. “Since the date of my last letter, a whole long winter has passed off, which Ihave whiled away on the Gulf of Mexico and about the shores of Florida and Texas” (Cat-lin 1841:97, letter number 47). Camp Canadian and the Texas Gulf Coast are the only men-tions of Texas in his letters. In none of his writings does he say that he ever went into theinterior of Texas—beyond the Red River or the Texas coast—and personally saw thescenes that he painted. He does not appear to have traveled to the area of the BrazosRiver, so his paintings of scenes along the Brazos cannot be taken as eyewitness accounts.The “elk” paintings were painted in a studio during the years 1846–1848, when he was liv-ing in Paris and, according to Valerius Geist, the anatomical details, the markings, color,tail, and rump patch, of the supposed elk he painted are consistent with European reddeer rather than North American elk. According to Geist, “Nobody looking at elk couldhave painted that [painting]” (Valerius Geist, e-mail to Richardson Gill, November 17,2011). The significance of the paintings, however, is that Catlin believed there were elkalong the Brazos River. One can infer that he was painting what was common knowledgeat the time—that elk were there—but they are not eyewitness accouns of elk in Texas.

PLACE NAMES

According to the U.S. Geological Service (USGS) Geographic Names Information System(http://geonames.usgs.gov/domestic/, accessed June 25, 2011), which contains over twomillion domestic geographical names, there are place names in Texas that bear the namesof elk, red deer, or moose:

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•Elk, Texas in McClennan County,•Elk Creek in Hemphill County,•Elk Springs in Archer County,•Elkhart, Texas in Anderson County,•Elkhart Creek in Houston County,•Elkton, Texas in Smith County,•Red Deer Creek in Roberts County, •Red Deer Springs in Gray County,•Moose Creek in McClennan County,•Moose Canyon in Val Verde County,•Moose Draw in Brewster County.

Most are located in areas where we have historical sightings of elk. Place names are oftengiven for reasons describing a locale or things seen at a locale. Although not dispositive,these place names may well have been given for elk seen in the area. In the case of Elkhart,a hart is a term for a male red deer, so an elk hart is what today would be called a bull elk.There is Moose Draw in the Glass Mountains of the Trans-Pecos, in West Texas. The areais arid and certainly no moose have lived there in historical times. Given the past confu-sion between elk, red deer, and moose names (as we will see below), one might surmisethat Moose Draw, Creek, and Canyon were named for resident elk. We should also notethat there is no Reindeer, Texas, or Caribou, Llama, or Wolverine, Texas, nor are therecanyons, draws, springs, or other features with those names, which suggests that placenames are rarely, if ever, given for animals that do not reside in the area. There are fea-tures named for lions and tigers, but those terms have been used in the past in Texas forpumas, or mountain lions, and jaguars, or Mexican tigers. There is also a Camel Draw inWest Texas where the U.S. Army once ran camel patrols and mountains named for ele-phants because of their shape. In short, place names provide further intriguing and cor-roborating, but not dispositive, evidence for the presence of elk in Texas.

TAXONOMY

F Elk belong to the large family of deer, the Cervidae, which includes elk and red deer,white-tailed deer, mule deer, moose, reindeer or caribou, and other deer in Asia andEurope. Within the family, Cervidae, elk belong to the largest genus, Cervus, the mostwidespread and best known deer in the world. According to Christian Ludt and his col-leagues, their DNA studies indicate the first ancestors of today’s red deer and elkappeared in the early Miocene, perhaps as early as 25 million years ago, in central Asia, inthe area between Kyrgyzstan and Northern India, most likely near the Hindu Kush inAfghanistan and northern Pakistan. They ultimately spread across the Northern Hemi-sphere to Europe, across Asia, and into North America (Ludt et al. 2004:1064, 1074, 1075).Elk appear to have moved into North America across the Bering land bridge during theIllinoian glacial maximum 300,000–130,000 years ago when the first elk fossils appear inAlaska. They spread into central North America during the following interglacial stage,the Sangamonian Stage (Bryant and Maser 1985:9–11; Guthrie 1966:50, 53–54; O’Gara andDundas 2002:82).

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The common nomenclature of Cervus in North America has been beset by confusion goingback to the early seventeenth century. The North American red deer is called elk today inNorth America. In most European languages, elk and its cognates are the name for what iscalled moose in North America. In the seventeenth century, the New England colonistscalled the elk the grey-moose, to distinguish it from the black-moose, or real moose. In the1700s and early 1800s, common names for elk were stag and hart. As far as we can tell, thefirst use in English of the name, wapiti, derived from the Shawnee language meaningwhite rump or white deer (see Figure 1 on page 7), was proposed by American naturalistBenjamin Smith Barton in 1802. In short, elk in North America have been called by manycommon names: elk, wapiti, biche, stag, hart, red deer, moose, grey-moose, moose deer,loshe, moostosh, wawaskeesh, round-horned elk, Canada stag, and cerf de Canada. (BAAS1837:160; Barton 1802:60; Bryant and Maser 1985:1; Geist 1998:170–171; Long 1837:359;Rhoads 1903:39; Schoepf 1788:11). Many scientific writers use the name, wapiti, but thecommon name in general use in North America is elk. In this paper, we will use elk andwapiti both to refer to North American elk. European elk, Alces alces, is called moose inNorth America. In recent years, morphological and genetic studies have been carried outto try to determine the specific or subspecific status of elk populations in North America,evidence which we will look at.

SPECIES

Cervus is the Latin word for stag or deer. They were described by Pliny the Elder(1685:456, 466) in his Naturalis historiæ around AD 77–79. The word, elaphus or ἔλαφος, isthe ancient Greek word for deer, hart, or stag, most often red deer in Greece. They arementioned by Homer and Hippocrates (Groshans 1847:258–259; Pereira 1835:327), anddescribed by Aristotle (1862) in his History of the animals. In 1758, the Swedish father ofmodern taxonomy Carl Linnaeus (1758:67), known as Carl von Linné after his ennoble-ment, classified European red deer as Cervus elaphus, in his groundbreaking book, Systemanaturæ, 10th edition, which established the system for modern taxonomy. He describedtheir range as Europe and Asia.

In 1693, John Ray (1693:84) described Cervus canadensis, as different from European Cer-vus. Jean-Baptiste du Hamel (1698:125) used the term in 1698. An early American natural-ist, John Brickell (1737:108), proposed that European red deer and North American elkwere “of two different kinds.” Jacob Klein (1751:23) described Canadian elk as “cervuscanadensis”, which he assigned to Cervus nobilis. In 1756, Mathurin Brisson (1756:88) for-mally classified North American elk as Cervus canadensis, followed by Georg Borowski in1780 (1780:72). However, in 1777, Johann Christian Erxleben (1777:305) classified Cana-dian elk from Quebec as Cervus elaphus canadensis. In the world of taxonomy, Erxlebengets the credit for the first use of the term, canadensis, as the first author to use the term fol-lowing Linnaeus’s introduction of his formal classification system in 1758. Since then, elkhave undergone repeated reclassifications, species and subspecies proposals, and scien-tific name changes, including C. canadensis, C. strongyloceros, C. major, C. major americanus,C. macrotis; C. elaphus, Elaphus canadensis, C. merriami, C. roosevelti, C. nannodes, C. manito-bensis, C. nelsoni, C. fortis, C. lucasi, C. aguangae, Alces americanus, and others (Audubon1851:84; Bailey 1935; Bryant and Maser 1985:1; Geist 1998:170–171; Long 1837:359; Kurténand Anderson 1980:318; Barclay 1935; Nelson 1902; Rhoads 1903:39; Schonewald

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1994:431). Barton tried to rescue the situation in 1802 by proposing the name, Cervuswapiti, for the scientific name and wapiti for the common name (Barton 1802:60).

By the turn of the twentieth century, North American elk were generally classified as Cer-vus canadensis (Anthony 1917:2; Lydekker 1901:51). Worldwide, the number of species ofelk and red deer proliferated. Bryant and Maser (1985:6), for example, listed 15 species ofCervus in Europe, Asia, and North America. In a 1934 paper, however, Edgar Barclaystudied what he called maral deer from the Caucasus and found close similarities betweenthem and North American elk. He also believed that some maral deer characteristics weresimilar to European red deer. Barclay does not describe the origin of the specimen hestudied and Geist believes it was not a true maral deer (Valerius Geist e-mail to Richard-son Gill, January 5, 2012). Nevertheless, Barclay concluded that his maral deer was anintergradation between red deer and elk, so he proposed that most European, Asiatic, andNorth American red deer and elk were conspecific, belonging to Cervus elaphus (Barclay1934). Barclay’s hypothesis was slow to be adopted. The first apparent acceptance by tax-onomists was by J. R. Ellerman and T. C. R. Morrison-Scott in 1951 (p. 367), followed by K.K. Flerov in 1952 (pp. 175–178). In 1959, however, Raymond Hall and Keith Kelson(1959:1000), writing in Mammals of North America, specifically rejected the intergradationhypothesis. “In the absence of intergradation between C. elaphus and C. canadensis, wetreat the two as distinct.” Over time, the unification was accepted by other, but not all, tax-onomists without much discussion. Although some researchers did not agree with theunification of red deer and elk, the notion became entrenched and accepted as true bymany taxonomists and wildlife biologists.

For examples of authorities that accepted the unification and classified North Americanelk as C. elaphus, see Corbet and Hill 1986:128; Ellerman and Morrison-Scott 1951:367;Findley et al. 1975:327; Flerov 1952:175–178; Geist 1998:170–185; Grubb 1993:387; Heptneret al. 1961:190; Hoffmeister 1986:534; Kays and Wilson 2009:94; Mayer et al. 1982:320;Nowak 1999:1110, 1113; Wilson and Reeder 2005:662.

For examples of authorities that did not accept the unification and classified North Amer-ican elk as C. canadensis, see Clutton-Brock et al. 1982:307; Cockrum 1960:250; Frey 2004:25;Groves and Grubb 2011:99; Gunderson 1976; Hall and Kelson 1959:1000; Mattioli 2011:351;McDonald 1984:528; Miller and Kellogg 1955:795; Putman 1988:13; Sanderson 1967:251;Trense 1989:108–109, 150, 343; Walker et al. 1968:1389; Whitehead 1972:38.

The one species was then divided into as many as 23 subspecies (Banwell 2000:328–329;Dolan 1988: Polziehn 2000:6). The holarctic distribution of red deer and elk contributed tothe suggestion that Eurasian and North American subspecies represented forms found atthe extreme ends of a cline and gave the impression of a gradient in phenotypes (Polziehn2000:78). Geist, however, argued that red deer and wapiti do not form a gradual clinefrom west to east. “Barring a few exceptions, within their wide distribution these deerform complex patterns of discontinuous populations” (Geist 1998:172).

Morphology.

•In a 1989 craniometric study of 298 female Cervus skulls, V. P. W. Lowe and A. S. Gardiner (1989:51) demonstrated that there was a definite gap in

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cranial measurements between Old World red deer and New World wapitis. They concluded that New World wapitis deserved a different subspecies designation, C. elaphus canadensis, from Old World red deer.

•In a later craniometric study of 274 adult North American and Eurasian crania in 1994, Christine Schonewald (1994:431) reported that “major intercontinental differences do exist between clinal extremes in behavior, in cranial size and sexual dimorphism in addition to semi-lethal F1 hybridization. All suggest Cervus elaphus and North American Cervus are different species.”

•Geist (2004) analyzed the world’s red deer based on adaptation and body form. According to him, elk have well developed appendages, bod-ies specialized for fast running over short grasses, and feature the largest antlers, all adaptations to open plains. He determined that North Ameri-can elk should be classified as Cervus canadensis.

DNA.

•A study of electrophoretic variability between red deer and elk by P. Dratch and U. Gyllensten (1985:39) found a marked divergence between red deer and wapiti, but they felt that the gene frequency data supported considering them subspecies of Cervus elaphus. Electrophoresis today would not be considered as accurate as modern DNA analysis.

Today, electrophoretic studies are not considered adequately sensitive. Since 1998, mito-chondrial DNA (mtDNA) and microsatellite studies have appeared which indicated thatred deer and elk should not be considered one unified species and the species status ofNorth American elk, C. canadensis, should be recognized.

•Renee Polziehn and Curtis Strobeck (1998:249, 257) studied the mito-chondrial DNA control region from North American and Siberian elk, European red deer, and Asian sika deer. They concluded that the nucle-otide diversity they observed in the control region of the mtDNA adds to the behavioral, ecological, and morphological evidence which recognizes a difference between these three cervids. In light of their study, they believed the status of wapiti as a subspecies of red deer should be recon-sidered.

•In 2000, Polziehn wrote that the division between mtDNA haplotypes of red deer and wapiti corresponds to subspecies found on either side of the Himalayan Mountains, which suggests Cervus elaphus may not have a cli-nal distribution. Phylogenetic evidence constructed from the cytochrome B sequences also identified a separation between red deer (Cervus elaphus) and wapiti (Cervus canadensis) lineages. She recommended the reinstate-ment of the classification Cervus canadensis for wapiti (Polziehn 2000:78, 99, 105).

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•Polziehn and Strobeck (2002:342, 354) followed with an analysis of sequence data from the control and cytochrome b regions of mitochon-drial DNA of red deer, sika deer, and elk which suggested that the varia-tion among sequences was such that wapiti are worthy of species status and that C. canadensis should be reinstated as a species.

•Ryu Kuwayama and Tomowo Ozawa (2000:115, 117–118) analyzed the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene in European red deer, North American elk, and Japanese sika deer. They determined that the large sequence dif-ference between red deer and wapiti suggests that the red deer and the wapiti are taxonomically different species.

•Ettore Randi (2001:1) and his colleagues reported a study of sequences from complete mitochondrial control regions that were used to infer phy-logenetic relationships in 25 Cervinae taxa. They concluded that nomi-nate Cervus elaphus includes two divergent clades that must be referred to as species elaphus (European elaphoid deer) and canadensis (Eurasian and North American wapitoid deer).

•Halik Mahmut and his colleagues (2002:485) reported in 2002 that their mitochondrial DNA studies showed two major clusters of haplotypes which referred to Eastern and Western lineages of Cervus.

•Christian Pitra and his colleagues (2004:888, 889, 893) also analyzed the mitochondrial cytochrome b gene to study the evolution of Old World deer, including Cervus. They determined that Cervus elaphus was para-phyletic and they found evidence for several species among what had been regarded as one single species. They proposed that North American, central Asian, and European red deer should be regarded as separate spe-cies, but that North American and Central Asian wapiti were not distin-guishable and formed a single clade, despite their wide geographic distribution and fragmentation. They considered that this clade should be assigned species status as Cervus canadensis.

•A study published in 2004 by Christian Ludt and his colleagues (2004:1064, 1070, 1075) did not support the classification of red deer and elk as only one species nor its division into numerous subspecies. Their analysis divided the genus, Cervus, into Western Red Deer (C. elaphus) and Eastern Red Deer. They divided the Eastern Red Deer into three sub-groups: South Asia, East Asia, and North Asia/North America, with Sibe-rian and North American elk (C. canadensis) being “more or less identical.”

To the best of our knowledge, we have compiled and summarized all of the DNA studiesto date that relate to the question of the speciation of red deer and elk. We are not aware ofany study since 1985 that supports the unification of red deer and elk in one species, whilethere have been nine DNA studies that support assigning North American elk to a sepa-rate species, Cervus canadensis.

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Hybridization. One of North America’s earliest naturalists, John Brickell, a medical doctor,wrote in 1737, “Some take the Elk for the Red Deer of America, but I am credibly informed,that they are of two different kinds, and that they will never breed together” (Brickell1737:108). However, Walter Winans (1913:33–36, 102–105) described as early as 1913 suc-cessful red deer × wapiti hybridization in Britain. Many species of Cervus are able to inter-breed and produce fertile hybrids (Pearse 1922:174). With the publication of articlesdiscussing red deer × wapiti crosses in New Zealand (Challies 1985:26; Geist 1992:171), theability of red deer and elk to produce fertile hybrids was taken as evidence that red deerand elk were conspecific. However, their hybrids are not always viable under natural con-ditions. European experiments showed that hybrid stags lacked the vigor to remainharem stags, showed premature aging, and were not disease hardy (Geist 1998:172).Hybridization among feral wapiti and red deer and hybridization on deer farms in NewZealand has been successful, although wapiti × red deer hybrids are considered to be atthe extremes of practical management (Pearse 1992:174–175). As Schonewald (1994:431)pointed out, red deer × elk F1 hybrids are frequently semi-lethal. In New Zealand, hybridshave succeeded (Challies 1985:26), but in the absence of predators and severe climate(Geist 1998:171), which calls into question their ability to survive under more natural con-ditions of predator pressure and extreme climate in their native range.

The ability of two races of animals to produce hybrids is not in and of itself evidence forconspecificity. After all, North American bison, Bison bison or Bos bison, and domesticatedcattle, Bos taurus (Groves and Grubb 2011:115; Grubb 2005: 689, 692), are able to producefertile hybrids known as beefalo and cattalo (Brower 2008:131–135; Singer 2005; http://americanbeefalo.org/, accessed January 28, 2012) which are commercially raised onranches in the United States and Canada. Bison × domesticated cattle crosses were notedas early as 1750 in the Carolinas, were commonly seen in Virginia by 1800, and deliberatebreeding began around 1815 in Kentucky. One of the early Texas breeders of cattalo wasCharles Goodnight at the Goodnight Ranch in the Panhandle of Texas who began hisexperiments in the 1890s. In South Dakota, Polziehn and her colleagues (1995:1638) havefound mtDNA from cattle to be present among bison in Custer State Park, thus indicatingpast hybridization. Bison and cattle are only related at either the genus level or at the sub-family level, not at the species level. Therefore, the ability to crossbreed and to producefertile hybrids does not define conspecificity.

Conclusion. Geist (2004:108) proposed that ”the ‘red deer’ in the consensus species Cervuselaphus thus represent a polyphyletic group, which can be split into three good species.Parallel and converging evolution from the same gene pool resulted in considerable simi-larity between the European red deer, the Tibetan and desert deer and the maral/wapitigroup.” Geist believes that North American elk should be classified as Cervus canadensis(Valerius Geist, e-mail to Richardson Gill, July 6, 2011). At the time of this writing, the twomost recent taxonomies to include elk, published in 2011, Ungulate taxonomy, by ColinGroves and (the late) Peter Grubb, and Handbook of mammals of the world, Volume 2—hoofedmammals, edited by Don E. Wilson and Russell A. Mittermeier, both classify North Ameri-can elk as Cervus canadensis. In the former, Groves and Grubb conclude:

One of the most unexpected, but most consistently corroborated, findingsof molecular studies on deer has been that the wapiti and shou are not Esubspecies of C. elaphus, as had always been assumed, but form an

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entirely separate clade, to which sika and white-lipped deer also belong.(Groves and Grubb 2011:94)

In the latter volume’s section on elk and red deer, Stefano Mattioli recognized three spe-cies in the red deer and elk complex:

We tentatively divide elaphine deer into three species, the Western RedDeer of Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia (Cervus elaphus), theCentral Asian Red Deer (Cervus wallichi), of Himalaya and South-easternTibet, and the Wapiti of Eastern Asia and North America, known inAmerica also as "Elk" (Cervus canadensis). (Mattioli 2011:351)

SUBSPECIES

The genetic variation of North American elk is less than many other species, such aswhite- and black-tailed deer and moose (Renee Polziehn, e-mail to Richardson Gill, July21, 2011). The average 0.560% genetic difference in mtDNA among North Americanwapiti is comparable to the 0.364% (2/549 nucleotides) observed in North Americanmoose (Alces alces) but substantially less than the 2.5% found in white-tailed deer (Odo-coileus virginianus) (Polziehn et al. 1998:1009). Previously, Cervus canadensis has beendivided into four subspecies in Asia and six in North America, of which two have suppos-edly gone extinct and four supposedly survive. The supposedly extinct North Americansubspecies have been Merriam’s elk, C. canadensis merriami, and Eastern elk, C. c. canaden-sis. The four supposedly surviving subspecies are the Roosevelt elk, C. c. roosevelti, Tuleelk, C. c. nannodes, Manitoban elk, C. c. manitobensis, and Rocky Mountain elk, C. c. nelsoni(See Bryant and Maser 1985:24; Dolan 1998:13–34; Hall 1981:1084–1087; Hall and Kelson1959:1000–1003; O’Gara 2002:45–48). Recent DNA analyses have not supported the tradi-tional subspecies designations in North America. A review of the literature reveals thatvarious recent studies have concluded there are either one, two, or three subspecies pres-ent in North America today. Let’s look at the studies and their conclusions.

One Subspecies.

•Matthew Cronin studied mitochondrial DNA in North American cervids in 1992 and found little variation in elk. “With the notable excep-tion of mule deer and black-tailed deer, subspecies of cervids are not identifiable as distinct assemblages of mtDNA” (Cronin 1992:70, 80).

•A DNA analysis of microsatellite loci was carried out by Roger Denome in 1998 for the North Dakota State Game and Fish Department on 225 tis-sue, blood, and antler samples of supposed Tule, Rocky Mountain, and Manitoban elk from California, Utah, North Dakota, and Manitoba. He found that:

•The overall levels of genetic variation were very low, compared to other free-ranging artiodactyls studied using the same molecular tools. These trends are consistent with a single large population of elk in North Amer-ica, at least in the recent past….Given these data, it is difficult to justify the maintenance of the Manitoba subspecies designation….

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•This work found populations that had low levels of genetic variation, low levels of inbreeding, and little population differentiation. The popu-lation–level differentiation that was present is most easily explained as the loss of rare alleles in some populations and not others. This pattern is consistent with a group of populations that were until recently one large population….

•The differences seen here do not support the case for separate subspe-cies. (Denome 1998:1, 10)

•In 2000, Polziehn (2000:99, 105) reported that in accordance with the trend to reclassify populations under one subspecific label, which could be observed in North America, she found little genetic diversity at mito-chondrial or microsatellite markers. She felt that lumping Eastern, Mer-riam’s, Rocky Mountain, and Manitoban elk under Cervus canadensis canadensis was supported by her work and recommended the reinstate-ment of the classification Cervus canadensis for wapiti.

•In a microsatellite DNA study of 11 populations of wapiti, Polziehn and her colleagues (2000:1561) concluded, “The overlapping distribution of genotypes from indigenous populations from Riding Mountain, Elk Island and Yellowstone National Parks suggests that wapiti were once a continuous population before settlers decimated their numbers.”

•Ludt et al. (2004:1073) examined mitochondrial DNA and determined there were two major groups of red deer in the world, a western group and an eastern group. They found Siberian and North American elk to be “more or less identical,” likely belonging to a single subspecies, Cervus canadensis, and the existence of further subspecies in Siberia and North America was unlikely.

•Noted wildlife biologist and taxonomist Valerius Geist stated, “The one gene difference between Olympic elk and Rocky Mountain elk is taxo-nomically trivial. That’s why there is only one subspecies of elk in North America and the regional difference, primarily in body size and environ-mentally affected growth pattern of antlers, are ecotypic” (Geist 2007:27, emphasis in the original).

•Geist further elaborated, “I regard all North American elk to be the same subspecies, C. canadensis canadensis Erxleben 1777, while recognizing that there are distinct regional ecotypes (Rocky Mountain, Tule, Olympic, etc.) as well as genetically recognizable populations” (Geist, e-mail to Richard-son Gill, July 26, 2011).

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Two subspecies.

•Groves and Grubb (1987:49–50) accepted nannodes as a separate subspe-cies on morphological grounds, but believed all other North American elk races should be lumped as C. e. canadensis.

•In an extensive review of the literature, O’Gara (2002:58–60. 62) con-cluded, “Considering the elk of North America to constitute two subspe-cies, C. e. canadensis (vernacular names Roosevelt, Manitoban and Rocky Mountain elk) and C. e. nannodes (Tule elk), is the only classification con-sistent with criteria suggested in this chapter.” He felt that Tule elk deserved separate subspecific status from other elk in North America based on morphological and genetic differences.

Rocky Mountain/Manitoban Elk.

•A craniometric study by Donald Hutton of 272 supposed Rocky Moun-tain elk and 25 supposed Manitoban elk was unable to find any difference between the populations (Hutton 1972).

•Microsatellite DNA studies carried out by Roger Denome for the North Dakota Game and Fish Department (1998:1) concluded, “The levels of dif-ferentiation observed for elk are lower than levels of differentiation seen in other large mammals that are considered to be members of the same subspecies. Given these data, it is difficult to justify the maintenance of the Manitoba subspecies designation.”

•The Alberta Wildlife Management Division no longer differentiates between Rocky Mountain and Manitoban elk for management purposes because DNA studies at the University of Alberta suggested no differ-ences between manitobensis and nelsoni (C. Strobeck quoted in O’Gara 2002:59).

•In their first paper, Renee Polziehn and her colleagues studied the D-loop region of mitochondrial DNA from supposedly pure populations of elk in Elk Island, Riding Mountain, and Yellowstone National Parks. They reported that using only specimens from these three populations, one would conclude that Manitoban elk were monophyletic which would lend support to their subspecies status. However, the sample size from Yellowstone was too small to draw strong conclusions about the relation-ship of Rocky Mountain elk to Manitoban wapiti. Using their complete dataset and including Rocky Mountain elk from the Canadian Rocky Mountains, they were unable to consistently differentiate between them and other supposedly Rocky Mountain elk. “The number of homoplasies and the absence of unique informative characters do not lead to a consis-tent division of Rocky Mountain or Manitoban wapiti into subspecies…. In the absence of geographic barriers, hybridization likely took place at some time between neighboring Rocky Mountain and Manitoban ani-

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mals, and both forms are found within one clade. The lack of distinction between some Rocky Mountain and Manitoban animals suggests that these two groups are at the early stages of subspeciation.” They con-cluded that the clade containing a mixture of Manitoban and Rocky Mountain wapiti suggests that both types recently descended from a common ancestor and that hybridization or insufficient time for separa-tion may explain the presence of the two types in the same clade (Polziehn et al. 1998:998, 1005, 1009; Polziehn 2000:30). In a subsequent paper, the same authors stated that this study detected little to no varia-tion between purported subspecies and “only hinted at subspecies differ-entiation” (Polziehn et al. 2000:1562). In her PhD dissertation, Polziehn cited this paper as evidence that a distinction between purported Rocky Mountain and Manitoban elk subspecies has little support (Polziehn 2000:47).

•In their second paper, a study of microsatellite loci, Polziehn and her colleagues found, surprisingly according to them, that the Riding Moun-tain, supposedly Manitoban, and the Yellowstone, supposedly Rocky Mountain, populations which are separated by more than 1600 km (1000 mi) and do not share recent founders, had almost indistinguishable geno-type distributions. After analyzing the three populations, they concluded, “The overlapping distribution of genotypes from indigenous populations from Riding Mountain, Elk Island, and Yellowstone National Parks sug-gests that wapiti were once a continuous population before settlers deci-mated their numbers. The lack of differentiation between these populations raises questions about the status of Manitoban (C. e. manito-bensis Millais 1915) and Rocky Mountain (C. e. nelsoni Bailey 1935) subspe-cies” (Polziehn et al. 2000:1561, 1567).

•In her PhD dissertation, Polziehn (2000:99–100) concluded that the clas-sification of Rocky Mountain and Manitoban elk in the same subspecies, C. e. canadensis, was supported by her research and by the two papers above that she coauthored.

There have been no recent DNA studies that clearly support the differentiation of RockyMountain and Manitoban elk into separate subspecies. Rocky Mountain and Manitobanelk appear to belong to the same subspecies, C. canadensis canadensis.

Three Subspecies.

•Polziehn and her colleagues studied sequences from the D-loop region of the mitochondrial DNA of 28 individuals including Rocky Mountain, Manitoban, Tule, and Roosevelt elk. All elk subspecies appear to have descended from one common ancestor. “Overall, there is a clear lack of mtDNA variation within North American wapiti that corresponds well to the results of previous genetic studies” and to the lack of morphological differences. They believed their study showed that there is a slight differ-ence between pure wapiti populations—those that have not had introduc-

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tions of elk from other populations—in Elk Island, Riding Mountain, and Yellowstone National Parks. In addition, they found that both Tule and Roosevelt elk are monophyletic, which suggests that each is derived from a single lineage and, by definition according to them, supports, but does not demonstrate, their subspecies status (Polziehn et al. (1998:1005, 1009). In a subsequent paper, they stated that this study “only hinted at subspe-cies differentiation” (Polziehn et al. 2000:1562).

•Polziehn and her colleagues (2000:1561–1562, 1569) followed with an analysis of 12 microsatellite loci in North American elk populations. They felt, they could detect unique lineages for Tule and Roosevelt elk, but only marginally more variation was detected than for other supposed subspe-cies. The overlapping genotype distributions of indigenous Manitoban and Rocky Mountain subspecies supports the need to re-examine the classification of these subspecies. The lack of differentiation between these populations did not support the subspecific status of Manitoban and Rocky Mountain populations. Additionally, they found no evidence of a distinct Eastern wapiti, either because Eastern wapiti were not dis-tinct or because no descendants supplemented the herds they examined.

•A 2007 microsatellite analysis by E. P. Meredith and colleagues found strong support for designating Tule, Roosevelt, and Rocky Mountain elk as separate subspecies. They did not include Manitoban elk in their study (Meredith et al. 2007:807).

We are left, then, with competing morphometric and DNA studies. Depending on the dif-fering viewpoints of various researchers and their interpretation of the data their studiesgenerated, the genetic and morphological differences between populations of elk in NorthAmerica are either not sufficient to warrant more than one subspecies or are sufficient towarrant two or three subspecies. The one consistent theme among all the studies pre-sented is that there is no evidence to support a genetic differentiation between the mon-tane Rocky Mountain elk and the plains Manitoban elk. There would therefore be littlelikelihood that the supposedly extinct Eastern elk would have been a separate subspecieseither, as there was no natural barrier to separate the Eastern population from the plainspopulation. “A panmictic or clinal distribution was suggested for eastern, Manitoban, andRocky Mountain wapiti” (Polziehn et al. 1998:1005). The vast elk population that lived inthe Rocky Mountains and areas to the east was comprised of one subspecies, C. canadensiscanadensis. Let’s look now at the possibility that there may have been another supposedlyextinct subspecies.

MERRIAM’S ELK

Formal classifications of deer have been inadequate, yet throughrepetition have become regarded as unquestionable primary sources ofknowledge. (Groves and Grubb 1987:22)

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The classification of a supposedly now extinct species or subspecies of elk, known as Mer-riam’s elk and alternately classified as C. merriami, C. elaphus merriami, and C. canadensismerriami, which inhabited Arizona, New Mexico, and the Guadalupe Mountains in Texas,has been widely accepted since the early twentieth century. (See Bryant and Maser1985:30; Cockrum 1960:250; Hall 1981:1085; Hall and Kelson 1959:1002; Hoffmeister1986:537; O’Gara 2002:45.) Findley et al. (1975:327) believed Merriam’s elk to be a geo-graphic race of C. elaphus. But was there ever sufficient, scientific evidence presented tosubstantiate the existence of a separate species or subspecies of Merriam’s elk?

Craniometry. When E. W. Nelson described his “new species of elk,” Merriam’s elk or Cer-vus merriami, in 1902, he based his conclusion on examining one skull of a very old bullheld by the American Museum of Natural History and comparing it to three other elkskulls, two of which he classified as C. canadensis and one as C. roosevelti, comparing twosets of antlers to three others, examining one skin at the museum for color, and reading thenotes of another skin that he had collected fifteen years earlier and sent to the museum(which in 1902 had been misplaced and was not available for him to study). It was cer-tainly not a comprehensive study. Nelson based his identification of Merriam’s elk onskull measurements, or craniometry, of the one skull he studied, measurements of one setof teeth, and measurements of the two sets of antlers, and the examination of one skin andthe notes of another—which was an accepted scientific approach in 1902. But it was cer-tainly not a comprehensive study and would be unacceptable by today’s standards of tax-onomy. He determined Merriam’s elk was a separate species because the skull wasgenerally larger than the average of the other elk skulls he examined and the skin was aslightly different color. The skull he examined was in the collection of the AmericanMuseum of Natural History, number 16211, and was collected near Springerville, Ari-zona. The second set of antlers came from the type skull in the collection of the U.S.National Museum (now the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History) andbelonged to skull number 91579, which was collected in the White Mountains of Arizona(Carmony et al. 2010:73; Nelson 1902). He compared the supposed Merriam’s skull tothree other adult males. For the skull measurements, Nelson claimed:

Cervus merriami has strongly marked skull characteristics. It differsstrikingly from both Cervus canadensis, of the northern Rocky Mountains,and from Cervus roosevelti, of the northwest coast, in having the nasalsremarkably broad and flattened; the palate narrow between the posteriormolars and in the great zygomatic breadth and massive molars. (Nelson1902:10)

However, despite Nelson’s claim, the nine cranial measurements listed in his table (repro-duced below as Table 3) for the Merriam’s skull are not separable from the other skulls,except in one measurement, zygomatic breadth, for which it was 7% larger than the nextlargest value.

In four of the nine measurements, the Merriam’s skull was smaller than at least one of theother skulls and in four of the measurements there was no significant difference—we donot consider the difference between 98 and 99 or 156 and 157 (units not given, butundoubtedly mm) to be significant differences. In only one measurement was it larger.Nelson explains away these mesurements on the basis that the measurements of the non-Merriam’s skulls are more “apparent than real” (p. 10) because the non-Merriam skulls

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with larger individual measurements are smaller in other characteristics.

Dr. Jerome Keating, former chairman of the Department of Statistics at the University ofTexas at San Antonio, perfomed a principal components analysis of the data in Nelson’stable. He found a negligible statistical difference between the four skulls, a difference of

Comparative Skull Measurements. (All adult males)

Occ

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Gre

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ates

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Zyg

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ae

Cervus merriami, near Springerville, Ariz., No. 16211 Am. Mus. Nat. Hist. (Topotype)

498 288 183 83 194 99 168 203 157

Cervus roosevelti, Olympic Mts., Washington, No. 91579 U. S. N. M., Biological Survey. (Type)

516 297 192 84 195 98 163 190 150

Cervus canadensis, Ft. Berthold, N. Dak., No. 2910 U. S. N. M.

500 288 172 70 185 89 170 186 156

Cervus canadensis, Republican Fork, Neb., No. 49402 U. S. N. M.

492 292 172 65 174 86 156 180 150

Table 3. Comparative measurements of skulls of Cervus merriami, Cervus roosevelti, and Cervus canadensis, as named by Nelson. Red numbers indicate the largest value. The merriami skull is the largest in only three values. In two of those values, it is only 1 mm larger and in only one value, the zygomatic breadth, is it 7% larger, 13 mm. As bulls age, the zygomatic arch can continue to grow, especially if the bull has a large set of antlers to support. Nelson’s merriami skull came from an old bull whose teeth were worn to the gum line. His own data do not support a significant difference between his merriami skull and other skulls which would justify a species or subspecies designation (after Nelson 1902:11, units not given, but undoubtedly mm).

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only 0.03% (three-hundreths of one percent). In fact, the roosevelti skull was larger than themerriami skull (Keating personal communication, January 11, 2013).

In summary, eight of nine measurements of the Merriam’s skull, 16211, fall within therange of measurements of the other three skulls and, on the basis of all the measurements,the roosevelti skull is larger than the merriami skull. Similarly, in eight measurements ofupper molar series (p. 12), the purported Merriam’s skull is larger in only one characteris-tic. In four measurements of the antlers, the Merriam’s set is larger in two and smaller intwo. Nelson did not present scientific evidence of a significant difference in morphologybetween the purported Merriam’s skull, 16211, and the three other skulls, especially theroosevelti skull. According to Colin Groves, “In many large ungulates, especially in maleswith their large armaments, the zygomatic arches become more robust, hence wider, withage,” especially if they carry a large set of antlers (Colin Groves, e-mail to Richardson Gill,January 16, 2011). Nelson’s merriami skull was from an old bull whose teeth were worndown to the gum line. He presented evidence that skull number 16211 came from a large,old bull, not a separate species or subspecies. There was never any scientific basis for Nel-son’s identification of Merriam’s elk in the first place.

Craniometry.

In 1978, Sydney Anderson and Richard Barlow (1978:63–70) carried out a craniometricstudy of Merriam’s skulls comparing twelve measurements from presumed Merriam’sskulls and antlers to skulls and antlers of non-Merriam’s elk and examining skins to deter-mine whether Merriam’s elk deserved species status. They first studied three skullsbelieved to be merriami, the holotype, USNM 111639 in the Smithsonian National Museumof Natural History, the skull originally described by Nelson, AMNH 16211 from theAmerican Museum of Natural History, and number 200 from the National Collection ofHeads and Horns at the New York Zoological Society. They compared these three skullsto three elaphus (which today would be called canadensis) skulls by taking 12 measure-ments. Their analysis determined that:

•The three merriami and the three elaphus of other subspecies are not con-sistently different.

•In no dimension are the three merriami completely separable from the elaphus.

•Alleged differences in color of merriami from that of other subspecies of C. elaphus do not seem greater than differences within the species and are not acceptable evidence for specific distinction of merriami (p. 67).

They then compared four supposed merriami, the three listed above and an additionalskull of unknown origin and apparently unknown age, number 130186—which had beenmounted as a trophy head and was included as merriami because its measurements weresimilar to those of the holotype—to seven elaphus skulls and determined:

•Cranial data…suggest average differences between merriami and other subspecies of elaphus in breadth across nasals, breadth across premaxillae,

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and general size, but samples are so small and variability so great that sta-tistical confidence in the reality of differences is not great (p. 67).

•For example, the best single character for distinguishing the merriami from the others is the breadth across premaxillae….The value for stu-dent’s t is 2.33, which is a little too low to conclude that there is a signifi-cant difference at the 95 percent level of confidence (p. 67).

•This illustrates again the marginal significance of the characters of merri-ami (p. 69).

•Cervus elaphus merriami was a marginally valid subspecies, not a sepa-rate species (p. 63).

Anderson and Barlow (1978:63) concluded that Merriam’s elk was “a marginally validsubspecies.” Taxonomist Colin Groves has pointed out, “As at that time, merriami wasgenerally regarded as a distinct species, this was quite a comedown!” (Groves, e-mail toRichardson Gill, November 25, 2011). We should note how little difference they foundbetween Merriam’s elk and other elk. In fact, the ranges of measurements overlapped forthe supposed Merriam’s elk and the other specimens studied. Had they not assigned tomerriami a skull of unknown origin and apparently unknown age, 130186, which theyfound in a museum collection, solely on the basis of its large size and cranial measure-ments which were similar to the merriami holotype, one has to question whether the anal-ysis would have even supported the conclusion of a “marginally valid subspecies.”Clearly, the assignment of the trophy head of unknown origin and unknown age on thebasis of its large size alone to merriami skewed the data in favor of a larger average for mer-riami. (Given the information available, this skull could just as easily have come fromWashington State as from Arizona.) Had they only used the known Merriam’s skulls, twoof which were larger, 16211 and 111639, and one of which was smaller, 200 (p. 67), it isquestionable whether the Merriam’s average would have been significantly different fromother elk. The measurements of skull 200, a known Merriam’s skull, fell entirely withinthe range of other purported subspecies’ skulls. One must also ask what other unknown“Merriam’s” skulls in the museums were not included in the study because they were notlarge enough to fit Anderson’s and Barlow’s predetermined size of a Merriam’s elk.Unfortunately, Anderson and Barlow did not include their data in their paper, so it is notpossible to see how they reached their conclusion.

Donald Hutton carried out an analysis of 297 skulls, or portions thereof, from several loca-tions within the range of the supposed Rocky Mountain, nelsoni, subspecies and supposedManitoba, manitobensis, subspecies of elk. He concluded that “the validity of the subspe-cies nelsoni, manitobensis, and merriami, as differentiated from the typical subspeciescanadensis, is questionable” (Hutton 1972:12, 68). According to Neil Carmony, DavidBrown, and Jim Heffelfinger, “The skull measurements of Merriam’s elk fall within therange of normal variation of other elk subspecies. In short, there has not been, and cannotnow be, an adequate evaluation and comparison of Arizona’s native elk to other subspe-cies” (Carmony et al. 2010:73, emphasis ours).

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It seems, then, that the morphological evidence for distinguishing a separate species orsubspecies for Merriam’s elk, based on cranial measurements, is nonexistent and does notwarrant subspecies designation, let alone species designation. As Groves and Grubb(1987:49–50) concluded:

The final race described from America is the poorly known C. e. merriami,from Arizona and New Mexico, which is now extinct. Anderson andBarlow (1978) found it doubtfully distinct on the limited evidenceavailable.

We accept nannodes as valid but think that the other North Americanraces should all be lumped as C. e. canadensis.

DNA. Let’s turn our attention now to DNA studies which directly analyze the genetic dif-ferences between populations. Is there DNA evidence, then, which would support a sepa-rate subspecies classification for Merriam’s elk?

•As we saw above, Polziehn (2000:99, 105) found little genetic diversity at mitochondrial or microsatellite markers among certain purported elk subspecies in North America. She felt that lumping Eastern, Merriam’s, Rocky Mountain, and Manitoban elk under C. e. canadensis was sup-ported by her research.

•Carmony, Brown, and Heffelfinger (2010: 73–74) have reported on DNA studies that were carried out comparing two supposed Merriam’s elk skulls to other purported elk subspecies. The comparison found that the two Merriam’s elk differed more from the other supposed subspecies than the other supposed subspecies differed from each other. The sup-posed Merriam’s elk differed from the others by 3 to 6 base pairs, whereas the other skulls differed among themselves by 0 to 4 base pairs. They cau-tion, however, that because of the small sample size—two skulls—it is difficult to draw firm conclusions.

Bart O’Gara (2002:13) stated that the minimum number of samples required for reliableresults is at least 20. Furthermore, David Ribble, the chairman of the Department of Biol-ogy at Trinity University, believed that "assuming there is no sequencing error (an issuewith old specimen amplification), an average of 3–6 bp differences in a small portion ofmtDNA (111 bp) is not convincing evidence of subspecies differentiation. Given the highrate of mutation in mtDNA, this difference would not be surprising for a species with alarge geographic range" (David Ribble, e-mail to Richardson Gill, January 28, 2012). Thegenetic information provided by Carmony and his colleagues at this point is insufficientto make any determination of whether the supposed Merriam’s elk represented a subspe-cies, an ecotype, or neither. It is not enough information, there are not enough base pairdifferences, to make any kind of decision.

Ecotype. Merriam’s elk was reputed to be larger in size, have more massive skulls, muchlonger and thicker antlers, and be paler in coloration (Genoways et al. 1979:306). Nelson(1902:8, 12) noted in particular the larger size of the antlers he studied compared to thethree other sets of antlers. However, O’Gara (2002:56) reported that elk from Yellowstone

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Park introduced in the presumptive range of Merriam’s elk in the White Mountains ofArizona now grow “enormous antlers.” Geist (1991:36, 40) reported that Yellowstone elkreintroduced into Merriam’s country grow to “remarkably large size”—as did the sup-posed Merriam’s elk. This demonstrates that morphological differences can be affected byenvironmental and climatic factors. Such morphological differences are not necessarilyindicative of genetic differences, such as would be found in different subspecies, but morelikely represent ecotype differences. Carmony and his colleagues (2010: 73–74, 81) pointout that 26% of the Boone and Crockett record elk antlers come from Arizona and theyattribute the presence of such large descendants of translocated Yellowstone elk to “har-vest management that allows many of them to reach their full genetic potential, a longgrowing season, relatively mild winters, and season structures that allow hunters anopportunity to harvest them.”

MERRIAM’S ELK IN TEXAS

Vernon Bailey, writing in 1905, first suggested that the nineteenth century reports of elk inthe Guadalupe Mountains of Texas were Merriam’s elk, but Bailey was unable to find anyspecimens from Texas. He based his determination that elk in the Guadalupe Mountainsof Texas were probably Merriam’s elk on part of one skull and antlers from the SacramentoMountains in New Mexico. According to Bailey, “No complete specimen, nor even amounted head of this elk is in existence from any point in New Mexico, although there area few old horns and part of a skull from near Ruidoso, and horns have been seen atranches east of Cloudcroft and in the Mogollon Mountains” (Bailey 1931:44).

C. merriami Nelson. Merriam Elk.There are no wild elk in the State ofTexas, but years ago, as several old ranchmen have told me, they rangedsouth to the southern part of the Guadalupe Mountains, across the Texasline. I could not get an actual record of one killed in Texas, or nearer than6 or 8 miles north of the line, but as they were common to within a fewyears in the Sacramento Mountains, only 75 miles farther north, I aminclined to credit the rather indefinite reports of their former occurrencein this part of Texas. Specimens of horns and a part of a skull from theSacramento Mountains indicate that the species was very similar to andprobably identical with the Arizona elk described by E. W. Nelson whohas aided me in making the comparisons. (Bailey 1905:60, emphasis ours)

Bailey made the determination that the elk in the Guadalupe Mountains of Texas wereMerriam’s elk based on part of a skull from New Mexico and the examination of antlersfound in New Mexico, using craniometry and antler measurements, which would not beaccepted as scientifically valid today. As far as we can tell, there are no extant specimensof pre-1905 elk from the Guadalupe Mountains available for study, other than fossil frag-ments of a bone and a tooth and presumed fecal matter, nor did Bailey study any elk fromTexas. Even if we assume the existence of a separate subspecies of Merriam’s elk in Ari-zona, there is no physical evidence that the elk that lived in the Guadalupe Mountainswere Merriam’s elk as opposed to Rocky Mountain/Manitoban elk. In fact, ChristineSchonewald has suggested that the supposed Merriam’s elk was a southern extension ofplains elk. “Merriami resembles what would occur in northern US or southern Canada,presently” (Schonewald 1994; E-mail to Richardson Gill, July 11, 2011). Groves and Grubbdid not accept the existence of Merriam’s elk:

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The final race described from America is the poorly known C. e. merriami,from Arizona and New Mexico, which is now extinct. Anderson andBarlow (1978) found it very doubtfully distinct on the limited evidenceavailable. It is marginally larger than other races, but even on the mostdistinct measurements (breadth across the premaxillae) the standarddeviations overlap widely. The antlers are very big, sometimes with onlya single brow tine. The color is said to have been paler than in roosevelti,with more reddish head and legs, and darker nose.We accept nannodes as valid but think that the other North Americanraces should all be lumped as C. e. canadensis. (Groves and Grubb1987:49–50)

When asked specifically about the existence of Merriam’s elk, Groves replied, “There isnot—there never was—any such thing as ‘Merriam’s elk’ ” (Colin Groves e-mail to Rich-ardson Gill, November 20, 2011). Both Nelson’s and Bailey’s papers were written over ahundred years ago, employing scientific techniques which were accepted as valid at thetime, but would not be today. A substantial amount of taxonomic evidence has been accu-mulated since then which refutes their conclusions.

SUMMARY AND DISCUSSION

ELK AS NATIVE ANIMALS

The evidence for the presence of elk in early Texas which we have presented in this paperis:

•Twenty early accounts of elk in Texas between 1600 and 1900, 14 of which are presumably firsthand, eyewitness accounts, in which the authors imply that they saw the elk themselves, and seven of which may possibly be secondhand accounts, because the authors do not state that they saw the elk personally. They are included because of the credible nature of the sources, like John James Audubon;

•Three, probably four, elk bones found within the state in archaeological contexts;

•At least two sets of elk antlers;

•One probable elk coprolite;

•An elk tooth associated with a bone.

•Two hundred bundles of deer, elk, and buffalo hides;

•Two Native American pictographs in the Trans-Pecos which appear to us to be elk;

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•One petroglyph of an elk;

•Ten place names;

The preponderance of evidence for elk being native to the State of Texas is substantial.Some of the evidence, like elk bones in archaeological contexts and eyewitness accounts, isdispositive by itself. Other evidence is not dispositive in and of itself, but adds to the con-clusive circumstantial case.

For the eyewitness reports, we have taken the authors at their word. If they used theword, elk, we have accepted that they meant elk, especially since many of the accounts ofelk mention deer and elk together in the same sentence. We accept that the witnesses sawboth. The early Spanish explorers sometimes struggled with words to describe what theysaw. There were two other species of deer in Texas, white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virgin-ianus) and mule deer (O. hemionus) and only one species or subspecies of elk (C. canadensiscanadensis). In trying to understand the Spanish descriptions, we tried to assess whetherthe reports could be describing one of the deer species. We only included those that wefelt clearly described elk. We accepted, for example, that deer as large or almost as large ashorses, with antlers 1.7 m (5.5 ft) long, are elk. One of the accounts in Spanish uses theword, elán, a French word which only means elk, together with the word, bura, whichwould indicate that the other report in Spanish referring to buros also refers to elk. Finalo’s and a’s in Spanish can be interchangeable with no change in meaning, e. g., encino andencina (oak).

The presence of elk bones in the state speak for themselves. They definitively identify elkas having lived in Texas hundreds of years ago. The early presence of elk antlers on theground is also evidence of resident elk populations. It is unlikely elk antlers would havebeen brought from elsewhere and placed or discarded on the ground.

In assessing the pictographs, we only chose two pictographs in which the artists paintedantlers with long, straight beams from which the points rose more or less perpendicular tothe beam and in which the antlers grew vertically from the base, rather than forward. Wegave the shape of the antlers greater weight than the size or shape of the bodies in ourassessment. There are other pictographs of deer-like and elk-like creatures which could beinterpreted as either deer or elk. We did not include them, even though other researchershave identified them as elk. The question of whether any of the pictographs in the LowerPecos Canyonlands represent elk or deer has generated disagreement in the past and willcontinue to generate disagreement in the future. Some scholars contend that that the RedElk (Figure 8 on page 23), for example, is a deer. Others accept that it might be an elk, butthat the artist would have traveled away from the Lower Pecos to see it and returned topaint it. As we have seen, however, there are two reports of elk in the Lower Río GrandeValley in the 1830s and 1840s, so it is quite conceivable that elk lived farther up the RíoGrande and possibly along the Lower Pecos at some point in the past as well. The petro-glyph from the South Plains is clearly an elk, although it is not possible to identify its age.

There are multiple place names in Texas which incorporate the names of elk, red deer, ormoose. Given the earlier confusion between elk, red deer, and moose names, it would be

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reasonable to assume that all three refer to elk and suggest that elk may have lived inthose areas. Animals that are not present in the state do not appear to have geographicfeatures named for them, with the exception, perhaps, of mountains named for theirshapes in West Texas. As noted earlier, there is no Reindeer, Texas, or Caribou, Wolver-ine, Lynx, or Llama, Texas, or creeks, canyons, or draws with those names, which suggeststhat place names are rarely given for animals that are not present in the area.

SPECIES AND SUBSPECIES

Renowned biologist Ernst Mayr, in his book, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology, definedclassical taxonomic species as classes, “as groups of similar individuals that are differentfrom individuals belonging to other groups” (Mayr 1988:336). With regard to elk taxon-omy, Rory Putman cautioned:

Subdivision can, however, continue indefinitely: every ecologicalpopulation differs subtly in some way from every other, and each couldlay claim to subspecific status. One wonders to what extent finer andfiner recognition of such subspecies reflects more local patriotism thanany real taxonomic significance. (Putman 1988:19)

Bart O’Gara pointed out,

Disagreement among evolutionary taxonomists is not over the questionof whether species have distinguishable geographic subgroups—most ofthem obviously do—but about the practicability and advisability ofrecognizing such subgroups as taxa and naming them as trinomials(subspecies) in the usual formal classifications…. Classification below thespecies level has been subjective because there are no standard criteria fornaming subspecies or populations.Habitats undoubtedly influenced the morphology of elk, but elk aregeneralists and most supposed subspecies thrive in the habitats of otherpresumptive subspecies. Over most of North America, variations causedby habitat and clines between ecotypes seem more likely than dosubspecies. Perhaps if the splitters of the late 1800s and the early 1900shad specimens at their disposal from every state where elk once roamed,most of those states would now boast their own subspecies. (O’Gara2002:21, 55, emphasis ours)

Early attempts to define elk species were efforts to identify morphological differencesamong various populations of elk. But elk populations in different geographical areas canhave different characteristics that are related to the climate and the environment and arenot necessarily innate, inherited traits. As we have seen, in certain circumstances, whenmembers of one population are translocated to other geographical areas, their descen-dants will develop traits characteristic of the native populations of those areas, as hap-pened with Yellowstone elk translocated to the White Mountains of Arizona.

Mayr went on to say, “There can be little doubt that the concept of the biological species iswhat most modern biologists have in mind when they talk about species.” The biologicalconcept recognizes that species are populations united by a joint gene pool and are theproduct of evolution (Mayr 1988:314, 321, 328). The two principal classes of evidence used

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Figure 11. Map of Texas indicating the counties where evidence of elk has been found. The evi-dence of elk is widespread across the state. Please note that in Table 1, there are 21 sightingsor reports of elk in the state. We have located 11 of them on the map. There are 9 additionalreports of elk which could not be precisely located and have not been included on the map.While reports claim that elk lived all along both banks of the Canadian and Red Rivers, we haveonly highlighted one county on each of those rivers per sighting. A, elk antler, AT, elk antlerhammer tool, B, elk bone, pB, probable elk bone, C, coprolite, H, elk hides, N, place name, P,pictograph or petroglyph, S, sighting or report of elk, T, elk tooth. We have only indicated atooth found together with an elk bone. We have not included teeth found by themselves asthere is a high likelihood they were trade items.

NS

S A

H

S

S

SS

S B T C

P N

P BB

pB

ATN

N

N

S SS

A

NN

N

N

N

S

S

Pecos

Brewster

Webb

Presidio

Hudspeth

Reeves

Culberson

Terrell

Val Verde

Crockett

Duval

Bell

Harris

Frio

Hill

Polk

Bee

Clay

Edwards

Starr

Jeff Davis

Kerr

Uvalde

Sutton

Gaines

Hale

Ellis

Leon

Hall

Bexar

Dallam

Irion

Cass

Hidalgo

Upton

Jack

Hartley

Wise

Zavala

Kinney

Erath

King

Oldham

La Salle

Kent

Rusk

Gray

Kenedy

Coke

Tyler

Floyd

Lee

Dimmit

Medina

Lynn

Lamb

Hunt

Kimble

Andrews

Jones

Brazoria

Llano

Ector

Travis

Falls

Smith

Terry

Knox

Reagan

Liberty

Milam

Real

Nolan

Bowie

Potter

Cottle

Zapata

Mills

Young

Houston

Ward

Jasper

Dallas

Collin

Burnet

Garza

Coleman

Coryell

Brown

Fisher

Motley

Cooke

Taylor

Moore

Atascosa

Mason

Bosque

Tom Green

Lamar

El Paso

Castro

Deaf Smith

Maverick

Donley

Hays

Baylor

Bailey

Lavaca

Brooks

Scurry

Denton

Archer

Parker

Concho

Fayette

Navarro

Runnels

Martin

Carson

Goliad

Fannin

Schleicher

Crane

DeWitt

Crosby

Shelby

Hardin

Newton

Briscoe

Borden

San Saba

Gillespie

Haskell

Wharton

Nueces

Panola

Wood

Roberts

Gonzales

Jim Hogg

Randall

Sterling

Foard

Parmer

Live Oak

Wilson

Tarrant

Dickens Grayson

Swisher

Dawson

Bastrop

Menard

Hockley

CherokeeAnderson

Howard Mitchell

McMullen

Victoria

Wheeler

Kleberg

Matagorda

Walker

Grimes

Jefferson

Jackson

Eastland

Midland

Refugio

Red River

Colorado

Blanco

Karnes

Cameron

Stephens

Sherman

Trinity

Winkler

Lubbock

Harrison

Ochiltree

Williamson

Callahan

Austin

Hemphill

Hansford

McCulloch

McLennan

Loving

Yoakum

Angelina

Lipscomb

Palo Pinto

Wilbarger

Stonewall Hopkins

Montague

Bandera

Freestone

Glasscock

Limestone

Cochran

Comanche

Johnson

Hamilton

Henderson

Fort Bend

Comal

Brazos

Kaufman

Sabine

Armstrong

Kendall

Robertson

Montgomery

Titus

Van Zandt

Wichita

Hood

Upshur

Willacy

Hutchinson

Childress

Shackelford

Nacogdoches

Burleson

Lampasas

Hardeman

Guadalupe

Caldwell Chambers

San Patricio

Marion

Madison

Delta

Washington Orange

Rains

Gregg

Camp

Jim Wells

Waller

Collingsworth

Throckmorton

San Jacinto

Calhoun

San Augustine

Galveston

Morris

Aransas

Franklin

Somervell

Rockwall

Calhoun

Calhoun

Kenedy

Galveston

Aransas

Kleberg

Nueces

Willacy

Cameron

Calhoun

S

N

0 100 20050 Miles

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to determine species and subspecies in red deer and elk have been morphological charac-teristics and differences in DNA, although behavioral characteristics have played a lesserrole as well. The difficulty of using morphology to define species and subspecies is thatthere can be wide variation in individuals within the same population in the same geo-graphic area and there can be variations in morphology between populations in differentareas caused by climate and environment. The fact that one population is consistentlylarger or smaller than another can be the result of nutritional differences in the food avail-able to them or the climate in which they live. As biological anthropologist Colin Grovesemphasized with regard to elk:

Many conspicuous external features—antler complexity, mane and rumppatch development—turned out to be related not to phylogeny as muchas to climatic-related lifestyle features. (Groves 2005:14)

The problems with using morphology as a taxonomic tool led Geist to conclude:

A fatal flaw in much large-mammal taxonomy is the use of comparativemorphometrics as a taxonomic tool. Comparative morphometrics ofcrania or skeletons of free-living populations can no more be used tomeasure taxonomic (genetic) differences than a rubber band can be usedto measure distance. Every set of comparable measurements concealsgenetic, epistatic, environmental and statistical variation. That is, thegross variation is a mixture of different types of variation, within whichthe genetic variance is undefined. It remains undefinable, despite variousapproximations. Comparative morphometrics as a taxonomic tool islogically flawed. It confuses phenotype with genotype, analogy withhomology, ecotype with taxon, and does not reveal the taxonomic andevolutionary differences between the populations compared. It revealsonly differences, the origins of which remain obscured. (Geist 1992:275)

Geist pointed out that elk increase in size in North America with latitude, thus trackingthe vegetation pulse, a pattern also noted by Christine Schonewald (Geist 1998:217;Schonewald 1994:436). He has further explained,

Within a subspecies, such as the Central European red deer (C. elaphushippelaphus, Kerr 1792), body size due to differences in habitat quality candiffer fivefold (from 70 kg adult stags from very poor industrial habitatsto 330 kg stags from the Carpathian mountains). These types of growthdifferences have long been explored experimentally by the agriculturaldiscipline of Animal Science, and they are nothing new. Also, nutritionexperiments have been done that more than doubled “normal” body sizeof red deer within five generations…. (Geist 2007:26)

With DNA studies, when are differences in DNA sufficient to establish a species or sub-species? Every individual in a genus will have different DNA from every other individualin that genus. Most populations will have different DNA profiles from other populations.The question, then, is when do those differences rise to be taxonomically significantenough to be the basis for defining species and subspecies? Are differences that are barelystatistically significant sufficient to qualify as different species or subspecies? Accordingto Renee Polziehn, the amount of genetic differences is not a standard for separating spe-cies or subspecies (Polziehn, e-mail to Richardson Gill, July 212, 2011).

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The disagreements in taxonomy are largely subjective and often like glass half full/glasshalf empty arguments. Two researchers can look at the same evidence and reach differentconclusions based on their tendencies to be either lumpers or splitters. Groves empha-sized that taxa are hypotheses; they are not set in stone. Unfortunately, according toSchonewald, comparative ecological studies have depended on an absolute taxonomythat makes undefended assumptions on the homogeneity or heterogeneity of populations.We are left, then, with the understanding that there may be only one subspecies of elk inNorth America or there may be as many as three. The evidence is not definitive enough toconvince everyone (Groves 2005; Schonewald 1994:450). What is in agreement is that thereis only one extant subspecies in and east of the Rocky Mountains. What is in disagreementis whether there are one or two or no separate subspecies in California from the rest ofNorth America. Because of the lack of geographic isolation, it is highly unlikely that wereever two now extinct subspecies, Merriam’s and Eastern elk.

MERRIAM’S ELK

The determination of a subspecies rests in part on genetic differences coupled with geneticisolation. Whether there was ever a Merriam’s elk in Texas depends on resolving twoquestions:

1. Did Merriam’s elk ever exist as a separate species or subspecies or wasit an ecotype whose larger body and antler size was environmentallydetermined?

2. Was the population of elk in West Texas genetically isolated from thevast gene pool of elk in and east of the Rocky Mountains?

Separate subspecies. To answer the first question, we have seen that the supposed differ-ences in skull size and antler measurements between the supposed Merriam’s specimensand other elk from North America are marginal at best and that in no dimension were themeasurements of the supposed Merriam’s skulls separable from other North Americanelk. All the measurements overlapped, although the supposed Merriam’s elk were largeron average. We have also seen that Yellowstone elk, when translocated to the presumedMerriam’s range in the White Mountains of Arizona, develop larger body size and enor-mous antlers, just as the presumed Merriam’s elk did. There was an attempt to explainthis phenomenon by suggesting that there were surviving Merriam’s elk in the WhiteMountains that had interbred with the translocated Yellowstone elk producing larger off-spring. Rick Purdue and his colleagues collected 82 samples of Arizona elk DNA andcompared them to 46 samples collected from elk in Yellowstone Park. The results showedthat the larger descendants of the translocated elk have pure Yellowstone genetics andthey have not interbred with any Merriam’s remnants—which doubtless don’t exist—or,perhaps, they did interbreed but Merriam’s elk were genetically indistinguishable fromYellowstone elk. In other words, according to Carmony and his colleagues, there is no evi-dence to suggest that today’s elk from Arizona are anything but a subsample of Yellow-stone elk (Carmony et al. 2010:83; Purdue et al. 2001:72).

Gene frequencies are attributes of populations, not individual animals, but the craniomet-ric and DNA studies of supposed Merriam’s elk have been done on only two individuals,when at least 20 samples should be used. It should be noted that the skull used by Nelson

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was a very old bull whose teeth had been worn down to the gum line. As we have seen,Groves (e-mail to Richardson Gill, January 16, 2011) pointed out that in many large ungu-lates, especially in males with their large armaments, the zygomatic arches become morerobust, hence wider, with age. The age of the other skulls Nelson used for comparison wasnot determined (Nelson 1902:11–12). Perhaps if very old bulls of other purported subspe-cies had been used, the differences between them would have been reduced (Carmony etal. 2010:72–73; Heffelfinger et al. 2002:10). Since 1905, craniometry and antler measure-ments on small numbers of specimens have been discredited as the sole method of estab-lishing new species or subspecies among elk (Geist 1998:182; O’Gara 2002:7–8). There istoo much natural variation in a population for measurements on a small set of individu-als, much less one individual, to reach meaningful conclusions about the population as awhole.

In an interesting experiment carried out in central Europe by Franz Vogt (1948) where reddeer normally grew to modest size and bulls in enclosures under exceptional care grewantlers rarely weighing more than 6 kg (13 lb), 34 red deer were fed a high protein sesamecake diet. At the end of the 12-year experiment, all but one of the red deer would haveranked among the top 100, in terms of antler measurements, 7 of the 34 exceeded the thencurrent world record, and the cast antlers averaged nearly 20 kg (44 lb). The differencewas nutrition (O’Gara 2002:8). Tule elk, which are regarded as the smallest race of NorthAmerican elk in both body size and antlers, will grow antlers equal to those of RockyMountain elk when raised in captivity and fed a nutritious diet (McCullough 1971). AsSchonewald and her colleagues (1985:72) noted, “Most of the habitats where Tule elk sur-vive are nutritionally and climatologically harsh. Tule elk in lush habitats look superfi-cially more like Rocky Mountain elk.” According to Geist, “Neither the antler formsdescribed for Tule elk, nor Roosevelt elk, nor Merriam’s elk have taxonomic significance”(Geist 1998:216). He elaborated:

Worthless taxonomically are differences in body size and shape, because these differencesare much affected by nutrition. Unfortunately, this includes cranial measurements and thesize and shape of antlers…. Skulls are likely to vary by a factor of 1.50 as a result of nutri-tion…. Comparative craniometry on free-living populations confounds genetic, epistatic,environmental, and statistical variations. (Geist 1998:182)

Genetic isolation. With respect to the second question, according to O’Gara, the idea that“elk were, indeed, isolated in the mountains of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and North-western Chihuahua—leading to speciation or subspeciation—seems open to question”(O’Gara 2002:56). We need to try to understand the pre-1492 populations of elk in Texasand New Mexico. Unfortunately, local extirpations have masked the continuity of naturalpopulations and gene pools. The first governor of New Mexico, don Juan de Oñate, trav-eled along the Canadian River in 1601 from New Mexico across the Texas Panhandle intoOklahoma and reported seeing elk on both banks of the river all the way (Oñate 1601:255).We know, therefore, that the elk in New Mexico were in contact with the elk in Texas,which were in contact with the elk in Oklahoma, which were in contact with the vast elkpopulations of the Great Plains. Gene transfers would have occurred throughout thathuge population. The elk in northeastern New Mexico would have participated in the vastgene pool of the Rocky Mountains and the Great Plains and would have been C. canadensiscanadensis. Furthermore, it is highly unlikely that the elk in northeastern New Mexico

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would have been isolated from the elk in southeastern New Mexico. There are no naturalbarriers to migration between the two areas. The Pecos River runs almost due south fromthe northeastern part of the state to the Texas line. There would have been ample wateravailable for elk to travel from northeastern New Mexico to southeastern New Mexico, sothe gene pool in northeastern New Mexico would have been in contact with the gene poolin southeastern New Mexico.

As we have seen, there is no apparent genetic difference between the montane RockyMountain elk and the plains Manitoban elk. Given that the Pecos River flows within 30miles of the Canadian River and within 20 miles of the Guadalupe Mountains, there is noreason to believe there would have been physical or genetic isolation between the elk inthe Guadalupe Mountains and the elk along the Pecos and Canadian Rivers. ArthurAdams pointed out that geographic barriers to elk migration are relatively few (Adams1982:315–316). According to O’Gara, the idea that montane and prairie elk do not mix isgroundless (O’Gara 2002:56). Some elk herds regularly migrate distances of 50 to 90 miles(Gearino 2010) and one radio-collared bull elk was tracked some 320 km (200 mi) (Irwin2002:509). Elk herds in Wyoming have been known to migrate up to 320 km (200 mi) fromtheir summer to their winter ranges (O’Gara 2002:56). The world champion traveler seemsto have been a bull elk from Montana’s Sweetgrass Hills who was radio-collared as a year-ling in 1987. Over the next four years, he travelled into Alberta, back to Montana, intoNorth Dakota and, following the Missouri River, down through South Dakota, Nebraska,Kansas, and into the environs of Independence, Missouri where he was tranquilized, cap-tured, and moved to a game park. He traveled 2,900 km (1,800 mi), some 1,800 airline kilo-meters (1,100 mi), along river bottoms, tributary drainages, lakes, highways, cities, farms,and fences. He was involved in an automobile accident with two cars, was variouslyreported to authorities as a big dog, a horse, and “the biggest deer in the world.” He cameto be known as Earl. Even despite his injuries in the accident, which left his back end “notquite right,” shortly before his capture, Earl was able to elude his pursuers by jumpingseveral chain link fences with no problem and disappearing behind a chorus of barkingdogs. During his travels, Earl was said to have attended barbecues, PTA meetings, andbackyard birthday parties (Olson 1991:19–22).

After all, elk spread from Siberia to Texas, over mountains, through valleys, and acrossprairies and plains. Therefore, geographic and genetic isolation of the elk in the Guadal-upe Mountains in Texas and New Mexico from the elk in and east of the Rocky Mountainsis highly unlikely.

CONCLUSIONS

Native elk. The available eyewitness accounts in every part of the state, the presence of elkbones and coprolites in archaeological contexts, and elk antlers on the surface of theground convincingly establish that elk were native to Texas. In addition, the pictographs,the petroglyph, and the place names, while not conclusive in and of themselves, lendadditional corroboration to the presence of native elk in Texas. The striking revelation ofthe map in Figure 11 is that the evidence of native elk is widespread across Texas and is

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not limited to one small area. The answer to the question we started with, then, is, yes, elkare native to Texas, to almost the entire state.

Merriam’s elk. We should remember that no Merriam’s elk was ever identified in Texas.Bailey presumed that the elk in Texas were Merriam’s on the basis of studying one partialskull and antlers found in the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico and deciding toassign it to the supposed Merriam’s elk specimen collected in Arizona. Even if Merriam’selk did exist in Arizona, it is doubtful that elk living in the Guadalupe Mountains wouldhave been more closely related to elk living in Arizona than to elk living in northeasternNew Mexico and the Texas Panhandle, which were connected to one another by the PecosRiver valley. The fact that elk are native to Texas is conclusively demonstrated by bonesrecovered south of the Red River in North Texas, in the Guadalupe Mountains in WestTexas, and eyewitness sightings from the Panhandle, through North and central Texas, todeep South Texas. They were undoubtedly a southern extension of the Rocky Mountain/Manitoban subspecies, Cervus canadensis canadensis, if such is distinguishable from theother elk in North America.

With regard to whether Merriam’s elk is a separate species, as claimed by Texas Parks andWildlife on their website, noted wildlife biologist and taxonomist Valerius Geist stated,“To consider Merriam's elk a different species is complete insanity” (Valerius Geist, e-mailto Richardson Gill, November 17, 2011). With regard to whether Merriam’s elk existed asa separate subspecies, taxonomist Bart O’Gara felt the idea “That elk were, indeed, iso-lated in the mountains of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, and Northwestern Chihua-hua—leading to speciation or subspeciation—seems open to question” (O’Gara 2002:56).Christine Schonewald has suggested that the supposed Merriam’s elk was a southernextension of plains elk. “Merriami resembles what would occur in northern US or south-ern Canada, presently” (Schonewald 1994; E-mail to Richardson Gill, July 11, 2011).According to Dale Toweill, wildlife manager and the senior editor of the encyclopedicwork, North American Elk: Ecology and Management, "Considering the wide-ranging natureof elk and the lack of physical barriers to movement added to the very small number ofsamples from purported Merriam's elk, I strongly suspect that designation of C. e. merri-ami as a distinct subspecies will be overturned following taxonomic revision" (DaleToweill, e-mail to Richardson Gill, December 28, 2011). According to Neil Carmony,David Brown, and Jim Heffelfinger, “The skull measurements of Merriam’s elk fall withinthe range of normal variation of other elk subspecies. In short, there has not been, and can-not now be, an adequate evaluation and comparison of Arizona’s native elk to other sub-species” (Carmony et al. 2010:73, emphasis ours). Noted taxonomist andbioanthropologist Colin Groves stated, “There is not—never was—any such thing as‘Merriam’s elk’ ” (Colin Groves e-mail to Richardson Gill, November 20, 2011).

There have been no DNA studies done on native elk bones or other specimens that livedin Texas before 1900, which could possibly be an area for future research for those bonesfound in archaeological contexts. It is likely, however, that the elk that lived in Texas inthe past would have been genetically indistinguishable from other elk in North Americaeast of the Rockies and the elk recently reintroduced to Texas are likely to be geneticallyindistinguishable from the elk that once lived in Texas. It is highly unlikely there ever wasa Merriam’s elk in Texas—if Merriam’s elk ever existed anywhere. The elk that lived inTexas were more likely closely related to Rocky Mountain/Manitoban elk. The native elk

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that once lived in Texas and the elk that live in Texas today most likely were and are thesame species and subspecies, Cervus canadensis canadensis.

WILDLIFE MANAGEMENT IMPLICATIONS

n 1997, the Texas Legislature, in a special-interest action passed without debate, declaredelk an exotic animal.

"Exotic animals" includes exotic livestock and exotic fowl as defined bySection 161.001(a), Agriculture Code, wild animals that arenonindigenous to Texas, aoudad sheep, and elk. (Texas Parks andWildlife Code Ann. § 43.103: Texas Statutes—Section 43.103(3):Definitions; See also Texas Parks and Wildlife Code Ann. § 62.015: TexasStatutes—Section 62.015(a): Hunting and Possession of Exotic Animals)

The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has resolved to lethally remove elk on the statelands they manage in West Texas. Their management plans say they intend to reduce elkand other exotic animal numbers on public lands in West Texas to the lowest numberspossible, with a goal of total elimination. Their management plan states that elk are exoticanimals and might pose a threat to desert bighorn sheep, another native currently makinga comeback in far West Texas through TPWD reintroductions. The Texas Parks and Wild-life Department’s Sierra Diablo Wildlife Management Plan, developed in 2006 andobtained through a freedom of information request, specifies the following policy (TPWD2006):

Two exotic species, aoudad sheep and elk, are present on the WMA….Elk are large ungulates capable of consuming large amounts of criticalwater resources as well as having seasonal diet overlap with desertbighorns. Both aoudad and elk and their high level of adaptability pose athreat to native species and native ecosystems. All exotics on the WMAwill be lethally removed when encountered…. (p. 13)Exotic ungulate populations will be controlled at the lowest numberspossible, with a goal of total elimination. (p. 22)Eliminate all exotic wildlife populations. (p. 24)

The Black Gap Wildlife Management Area plan states (Pittman 2010):

All aoudads and other exotic ungulates observed on the Area will becontrolled at the lowest numbers possible. (p. 13)Exotic ungulate populations will be controlled at the lowest numberspossible. (p. 26)

As we can see, the Department’s policy is that exotic ungulates, which include elk, are tobe lethally removed when encountered by Texas Parks and Wildlife personnel. The policyis being implemented and elk have been shot. The Department is also encouraging orrequiring similar management policies on cooperating private ranches as well. Unsignedcopies of cooperative agreements provided to us by the Department with the owners ofthe Oma Mae Bean and Jim Bean Ranches require that:

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Cooperating landowners shall implement bighorn sheep conservationpractices recommended in the management plan. Such practices shallinclude, but not limited to [sic], the removal of all domestic sheep, goats,and exotic animals….

As can be seen, the landowners are required to implement bighorn sheep conservationpolicies recommended in the management plan, which include the lethal removal of elk.

Theodore Roosevelt deserves much of the credit for creating a system of national refugesin the United States for the protection and management of wildlife. The concept of conser-vation was first proposed to Roosevelt by his chief forester Gifford Pinchot in 1907. Hetook the idea to Roosevelt who accepted it “without the slightest hesitation” and devel-oped the Roosevelt Doctrine (Wolfe et al. 2002:584) which held, as formulated by DaleToweill and Jack Thomas:

Natural resources can, and must, be managed as integrated systems…. Conservation through wise use is a public responsibility and ownership ofwildlife and other natural resources are a public trust; andThe best scientific information and judgment were to be the basis formanagement decisions. (Toweill and Thomas 2002:795, italics in theoriginal)

The Roosevelt Doctrine has informed subsequent efforts at wildlife conservation withnational and state agencies working to increase wildlife in general and elk populations inparticular nationwide. The Roosevelt Doctrine holds that wildlife can and must be man-aged as integrated systems, that conservation through wise use is a public responsibility,the ownership of wildlife is a public trust, and that the best scientific information shouldbe the basis for wildlife management decisions. According to Theodore Roosevelt’s princi-ples, wildlife should not be managed for the benefit of one species to the detriment of oth-ers. Wildlife should be managed as an integrated system for the benefit of all componentsof the system. The decisions to be made for the system should be based on the best scien-tific information. We have presented in this paper the scientific evidence that elk are a nat-ural part of the wildlife system in Texas and should be recognized as Texas natives,deserving of the same protection and support that other native animals receive. The own-ership and care of elk in Texas is a public trust and should be treated as such.

Although elk once occupied much of Texas, native herds were extirpated by 1850–1870 inmost of the state and by 1880–1900 in the Trans-Pecos. Elk were first reintroduced to Texasby private landowners beginning in about 1891, according to Mary Ann Goodnight, whenthe Goodnight ranch in the Panhandle acquired their first elk (Davison 1901). In 1928,Judge J. C. Hunter translocated elk from the Black Hills of North Dakota to the GuadalupeMountains in Culberson County (http://www.nsrl.ttu.edu/tmot1/cervelap.htm, accessedJanuary 28 2012). Elk once again range free in West Texas, with many more on ranches inother parts of the state. In 2008, there were an estimated 1,600 free ranging elk in themountains of the Trans-Pecos. These introductions were not part of an organized effort.

The Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife has no coordinated plan for the reintroduc-tion of this species into formerly occupied and still suitable native habitats. In fact, in 1997,the Texas legislature declared elk to be exotic, nonindigenous animals. As a native species,

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elk contribute to the function of complete ecosystems. The Texas Parks and WildlifeDepartment has played a major role in ensuring the survival of native game animalsthroughout the state and it seems that the failure to become actively involved in restoringthe state's native elk population is based on confusion about the historic range and abun-dance of these animals and their taxonomic relationships to elk elsewhere outside ofTexas.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to acknowledge and thank Dr. Russell Pfau, Dr. Valerius Geist, Dr. ColinGroves, and Dr. Dale Toweill for reviewing the manuscript and providing extensive com-ments, suggestions, articles, and additional taxonomic information to us. Dr. Lee Lymanreviewed the paper for a journal, made numerous helpful suggestions, and spent hours onthe phone discussing improvements. Dr. Richard E. W. Adams read the manuscript andmade useful comments. Mr. Andy Cloud did extensive editing and proofreading of thepaper. We appreciate the efforts of Dr. Christine Schonewald, Dr. Renee Polziehn, Dr. DonE. Wilson, Dr. David Ribble, and Dr. David Hillis who helped us understand the finerdetails of elk taxonomy. We learned much from Dr. Alfred Gardner with respect to elkbones and from Dr. Solveig Turpin about Texas rock art. We are also grateful for the sug-gestions of Dr. Montague Whiting. Mr. John Sherman found an eyewitness sighting of elkfor us. Drs. Frederick Stangl, Clark Wernecke, John Seebach, Paul Carlson, Warren Bal-lard, Ernest Lundelius, James Heffelfinger, and Elizabeth Cary Mungall provided us witharticles, data, and bibliographic references. Mr. Wyman Meinzer kindly provided us witha photograph he took of a petroglyph. We appreciated our discussions with Drs. BrianShaffer, Timothy Pertulla, Lee Bement, Eric Hellgren, William Keel, and Messrs. MarkWalters, Dale Repnow, and Tom Toman. We appreciate the help of Ashley Adair and thestaff of the Austin History Center, Sue Varvil at the British Deer Society, and Peggy Scottat the San Diego Zoo. We appreciate the help of the staffs of the Trinity University and theUniversity of Texas at San Antonio libraries. We would like to especially thank ShahrzadDowlatshahi for her enthusiasm, encouragement, proofreading, and editing. Finally, weare grateful for the time taken and the careful comments made by the anonymous review-ers. The paper is substantially improved because of the assistance of all of these individu-als.

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