In 1993, Montana game wardens sent a tissue sample from an elk killed near Elliston to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service forensics laboratory in Ashland, Oregon. They were trying to build a case against a poacher. The lab came back with something the wardens had not expected. The animal was not a pure Rocky Mountain elk. It was a third- or fourth-generation cross with European red deer.
Red deer are the elk’s closest Old World relative. They are smaller, more aggressive breeders, and they bellow instead of bugle. On game farms in the United States and overseas, they have been deliberately crossbred with elk to produce larger-antlered trophy animals. The hybrids are fertile. Their offspring are fertile. After three or four generations the animals look enough like elk that no one standing in the field would know the difference.
Worried by the Elliston result, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks collected tissue from 10 more elk killed legally by hunters in the same area. One carried red deer genes. A second was probably a hybrid, though the tests were inconclusive. None of the animals wore ear tags, which Montana law requires on captive elk. The nearest game farm was about 90 miles away. Heidi Youmans, who had authored the department’s report on game farms, told the press it looked like the state’s worst fears had been confirmed. “We have a problem,” she said. “It has happened.”
Officials could not determine whether the hybrid animals had escaped from a game farm, had been released accidentally during transport, or were the wild offspring of earlier escapees now breeding freely in the mountains. Montana already banned the import of red deer and hybrids, but genetic testing at the time had limits, and game farmers were often reluctant to report escapes.
The concern was not aesthetic. Red deer and elk diverged as species roughly two million years ago. They can interbreed because they share the same genus, but mixing them in a wild population dilutes the genetic identity of the native herd. Red deer genes can alter body size, antler structure, breeding behavior, and the timing of the rut. Once those genes enter a free-ranging elk population, there is no way to pull them back out. The animals carrying them look like elk, breed like elk, and pass the foreign DNA to every generation that follows.
Thirteen years later, the fear went from background worry to front-page crisis. In August 2006, roughly 160 captive elk broke through the fence of Rex Rammell’s Chief Joseph hunting preserve near Ashton, Idaho, about ten miles from the boundary of Yellowstone National Park. The elk had bolted through a hole dug under the fence by a bear. Rammell, a veterinarian, had a history of clashing with the Idaho Department of Agriculture over disease testing and fence maintenance. He had never properly tagged the animals.
Idaho Governor Jim Risch signed an emergency executive order on September 7 directing the immediate destruction of every escaped elk. The stated reasons were the risk of chronic wasting disease, brucellosis, tuberculosis, and red deer hybrid genes entering the wild herds of the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. Montana’s governor and Wyoming’s governor both pressed Idaho to act. Rammell was arrested for obstructing a Fish and Game officer. He later sued the state for $1.3 million.
When the results came back, every concern turned out to be empty. Thirty-six of the killed elk were tested. None carried chronic wasting disease. None had brucellosis or tuberculosis. None had red deer DNA. Tests on 61 live elk still at the preserve were also clean. The governor’s office declined to apologize.
Montana and Wyoming had already banned elk farming by that point. Idaho had not, though the Rammell escape pushed the state closer to doing so. The industry insisted that domestic elk posed no genetic threat to wild herds. The Elliston hybrids from 1993 said otherwise.
Image is for illustration purposes only.
Source: Deseret News/AP (1994) / Spokesman-Review (2006) / Idaho Fish and Game (2006) / Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks / Idaho Department of Agriculture
Escaped Captive Elk Renewed Fears of Red Deer Hybrids
