Fortunately, the story doesn’t end there. In 2001, the National Park Service began a project to reintroduce elk to the Cataloochee Valley in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. NPS reintroduced 25 elk to the area and then added another 27 elk in 2002. Since then, the elk population has grown and experts are cautiously optimistic about the increasing numbers.

“Right now, we can only estimate a minimum count of about 140,” says Eastern Band of Cherokee Indian’s Supervisory Fish and Wildlife Biologist Dr. Caleb Hickman. “We know that many are in the woods somewhere, outside of our search capabilities. I introduced a method to our group that uses fecal DNA to identify individuals so that we do not have double counts in different places and we can sample much more easier than putting a tag or collar on an animal, which is expensive and uses dangerous chemicals for sedation.”