Return of the Elk

Editor’s note: After this story went to press, leaders of the elk restoration plan decided to delay the project for at least another year. 

The names are scattered across the landscape of Minnesota like fallen leaves, old memories of an animal that, according to settlers’ reports and Native American recollections, roamed much of the state.

Elk Lake in Itasca State Park and its tributary Elk Creek. Lake Itasca itself was called by the Ojibwe omashkooz—elk.

More Elk Lakes are in Douglas and St. Louis counties. And in Grant County, “where elk were plentiful,” according to Warren Upham’s Minnesota Geographic Names of 1920. And Elk River in Sherburne County, and the town of the same name.

There’s White Elk Lake and White Elk Brook in Aitkin County, and Elkhorn Lake in Kandiyohi County, “where a pair of very large elk antlers were found in 1857,” according to Upham. He also wrote that Elkton Township in Clay County was named for “the elk formerly common or frequent here and in many parts of Minnesota.” Tiny Elkwood Township in Roseau County eventually disappeared, like the native elk themselves.

Now planning is well under way to reintroduce the animal in the Cloquet area, near the edge of its historic state range, and Mike Schrage for one can hardly wait.

“One of the reasons a lot of us get into wildlife is to, you know, do things like restore native species,” says Schrage, wildlife biologist for the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa west of Cloquet. Schrage sits behind the wheel of a Tribal pickup as we bump down a forest road through a landscape of hardwoods, occasional towering pines, and recent clear-cuts sprouting dog-hair aspen along the western edge of the Fond du Lac Reservation. In the back seat is Makenzie Henk, newly hired from California’s Catalina Island Conservancy as the band’s elk biologist. They are showing me new habitat for elk and the site where elk are slated to be released into the surrounding countryside by the band, in cooperation with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.

Schrage’s booming voice and careful diction come through loud and clear, despite the wind blowing through an open window and brush slapping the side of the truck: “My idea of success, or one of the measures of success, is elk leaving here and moving to other places and establishing herds outside of our initial restoration area.”

If the effort succeeds as Schrage and band members hope, this vision could become a reality. Beginning in early 2026, under the band’s plan, groups of elk will be moved over a five- to 10-year period from existing herds in northwestern Minnesota to the reservation in Carlton and southern St. Louis counties “with a goal,” the plan reads, “of restoring a once abundant native species to suitable habitat on and near its historic range in northeast Minnesota, as well as establishing a robust self-sustaining herd with opportunities for elk viewing and future hunting by Tribal and nontribal members.”

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, despite years of tough political fights over elk in the northwestern corner of the state, supports the planning efforts. Says Kelsie LaSharr, the DNR’s newly appointed elk coordinator, “Fond du Lac is leading the project, but we are supporting them and working alongside them on the project the whole way.”

 “Elk are incredibly important for a variety of reasons,” says LaSharr. “They play such an important role in the ecosystem for keeping areas open through their browsing efforts. They help with seed regeneration for native plants when they’re in prairie restoration areas. They provide recreational opportunities through hunting, photography, viewing, listening. A lot of people across the state value elk, just having them in the state.”

That may be particularly true of Fond du Lac band members, whose ancestors ate elk and made clothing and other goods from hides, antlers, teeth, and bones. In fact, the band’s reintroduction plan prominently cites as a reason for restoration “future hunting by Tribal and nontribal members.”

“A lot of people don’t know we have elk in the state,” LaSharr says, “but then as soon as they know we have them, they get really excited.”

Wait, Minnesota has elk? We do—but getting and keeping them hasn’t always been easy.

Minnesota first protected elk in 1893. By then, there wasn’t much to protect. Settlers had pretty much wiped out all the elk in the state’s rapidly transforming farmland and forests. From 1914 to 1915, 56 elk from the Yellowstone–Jackson Hole area and a private elk farm near St. Paul were brought to Itasca State Park and kept in a 700-acre enclosure. In 1935, when money was no longer available to feed them, the 27 remaining elk from the park were released near Grygla in northwestern Minnesota. The herd grew slowly and gradually moved southwest, where forest and brushland mixed with row crops.

“The Grygla population had gotten actually north of 100 animals at one time,” says Jason Wollin, Karlstad Area wildlife supervisor in far northwestern Minnesota. “So we started having depredation concerns and crop damage and that kind of stuff.” The damage elk leave in their wake is far more obvious than whatever harm whitetails do. Elk are more than twice the size and gather in greater numbers, devouring corn, soybeans, sunflowers, and hay and trampling the remains into the dirt.

So by 1987, the agricultural interests of northwestern Minnesota insisted on a hunting season to keep the Grygla elk numbers below about 30. While a small herd persisted, something else was happening along the border. Manitoba was actively growing its elk herd, and animals were spilling across the border into Minnesota, forming what became known as the Kittson Central herd near Lancaster and the Caribou-Vita herd (named for small communities in the United States and Manitoba, respectively), which ebbs and flows across the border.

While the Grygla herd has numbered too low for a hunting season since 2012, the two herds near the border have collectively numbered around 300. As required by statute to keep numbers from getting too high, the DNR has issued elk tags to hunters—10 last fall. The Red Lake Band of Chippewa also harvested 10 elk in 2024.

Despite the success of the Kittson County herds, conflicts with agriculture stymie any efforts to grow the herd across the region.
“To address the elephant in the room, yeah, there’s definitely some crop damage that occurs with elk,” says Wollin. “Trying to address some of those concerns is why we have only as many elk in this country up here as we do, and why we hunt the elk in a fashion to limit their population.”

The “biological capacity” of the northwestern landscape to sustain elk, Wollin explains, is greater than the “social capacity” of local landowners to tolerate depredation.

Fortunately, there may soon be a place for some of these elk to get a more welcome reception. In a study of public and landowner attitudes about elk reintroduction in the northeast, the Fond du Lac Band and University of Minnesota researchers found strong support for restoring “wild, free-ranging elk” to the planned reintroduction area.

Hatching the Plan. Elk exist in the popular imagination as open-country animals. Imagine a big bull trotting and shaking his antlers against a backdrop of mountains and big sky. But many eastern states have successfully reintroduced elk to heavily forested areas in places where they used to live. Kentucky now has more than 10,000 elk in a region characterized by some 80 percent forest and less than 10 percent agriculture. Sizable herds also roam parts of Michigan, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia…

And Wisconsin. Several hundred elk live near Black River and around Clam Lake. Mike Schrage was acutely aware of the comings and goings of the Clam Lake herd, particularly since several Ojibwe bands, all members of the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, live across northern Wisconsin.

So, he wondered, why not elk in Minnesota? Especially since the area around Fond du Lac, like northern Wisconsin, has far less farming, particularly row crops, than northwestern Minnesota.

Though the road to elk reintroduction at Fond du Lac would be long and complex, Schrage’s initial idea got a fast thumbs up from his boss and the band’s Tribal Council. “I was sitting outside our building with our division director [Reggie DeFoe at the time] while he was on a smoke break and pitched the idea to him,” Schrage says as we drive along a gravel road. “And he said, ‘Sounds good.’ We had a special meeting with the council, and I pitched the idea to them. And I distinctly remember our chairwoman at the time, Karen Diver, at the end of my presentation, asked, ‘So were they native?’ I said yes. ‘OK, let’s do it.’ It was that easy.”

That was in 2014. It took years to develop the proposal and choose a study area to reintroduce the elk. The band and the University of Minnesota examined sites including the Cloquet Valley State Forest north of Duluth, the Nemadji State Forest south of Duluth, and an area to the west of Duluth centered on the Fond du Lac Reservation and adjoining Fond du Lac State Forest. All provided good habitat—primarily deciduous forest with logged areas of young aspen. All three had high proportions of public or Tribal land and little farmland. And just as important, landowners and other residents of all three areas overwhelmingly supported reintroducing elk. Says Schrage, “Eighty percent of people responding to our survey were in favor of this elk idea. And that was not just the Tribal community.”

Fond du Lac won out over the Cloquet Valley area, where the St. Louis County Board opposed the plan, and the Nemadji area, where proximity to more roads and agricultural areas and the need to coordinate management with Wisconsin raised complications.

One obvious challenge: Where to get the elk? “In the early days of this, there was a lot more hope that we could source wild elk from places like Kentucky,” says Schrage. Kentucky had supported other restoration efforts. An infusion of hundreds of elk from a state that had thousands would speed the reintroduction process with a diverse founding population.

But the prevalence of chronic wasting disease in deer and elk has made securing elk more difficult. It became apparent that the best source might be northwestern Minnesota, where herds are in robust health.

The DNR, having dealt for years with agricultural depredation concerns in the northwest, proceeded cautiously with the northeastern reintroduction plans. Eventually the agency issued a formal letter of support. With that, the Minnesota Legislature appropriated $2.3 million to the state and the Fond du Lac Band to reintroduce elk.

Any reticence about elk has eased, says Chris Balzer, the DNR’s area wildlife supervisor in the Cloquet-Duluth area where the elk will be reintroduced. “I think folks are pretty excited. I think the credit needs to go to Mike Schrage for his vision and getting it started.”

Preparing the Way. Schrage pulls over at a broad clear-cut that stretches into the distance on either side of the road—as if we are crossing a river planted in grass and wildflowers. It is the pathway of the Enbridge Line 3 oil pipeline. Despite the opposition of some Native American activists around Minnesota, “Fond du Lac reached an agreement with Enbridge to let them put the new pipe in their existing corridor,” Schrage says.

The 13 miles of pipeline corridor through the reservation has become a centerpiece of the elk habitat that Fond du Lac and the state are creating in advance of arriving elk. “It’s gonna be here,” says Schrage as we pile out of the truck to look around. “So let’s make it elk habitat and good for wildlife and other stuff.”

Farther along, we stop and look at an area of timber harvest—mostly clearcut, but with scattered big red and white pine and acorn-producing oak. Some red pine seedlings have been planted in the understory. Young aspen sprout like broomsticks.

“There’s a lot of young aspen. And then there’s oak here and there, which provide hard mast. Elk will eat acorns,” says Schrage. “This is good elk habitat.” Once the young pines mature, “then it becomes winter cover. So as it gets older, it has a different value for wildlife.” The rotating cycles of cutting and growth are similar to ongoing management on state, Tribal, and county land for species such as deer, ruffed grouse, woodcock, golden-winged warblers, and wild turkey.

Finally, deep in the woods, far from any highway, we come to the site, leased to the band from Carlton County, of a future holding pen for freshly arrived elk. The band will contract for the construction of a 10-foot-high fence around three to four acres, and an upgrade to the access road to accommodate trucks year-round.

If all goes according to plan, starting next winter, the band will hire contractors to begin catching elk in northwestern Minnesota, either by darting or netting from helicopters or baiting the animals into corrals. Captured elk will be delivered to the new pen, along with water and hay as supplementary feed. “They will hang out in the pen until the snow melts and the vegetation begins to green up,” says Schrage. Then the gate will swing open, and the elk will step into their new world.

Once They’re Here. In the months to follow, as elk wander farther from their reintroduction pen, seek out food and habitat, and inevitably encounter predators such as wolves and black bears, they will be wearing tracking collars. And the band’s biologists will be following.

“The big questions we’ll be looking at is habitat use—where do they go, what do they use—and mortality—how many survive,” Makenzie Henk says from the back of the truck. She hopes to be able to rush to find any freshly killed elk. “Can we determine what the cause was? Is it a vehicle? Is it a predator? Those will be the big questions, especially right out of the gate.”

DNR studies of elk in the northwest are also gathering data that could aid the newcomers in the northeast. Biologists are using tracking collars to learn more about elk wanderings and about calf and adult losses to predators, as well as vaginally implanted transmitters in pregnant cows to signal when they give birth.

Importantly, the newly arrived elk will already be familiar with black bears and wolves, the two significant predators in the reintroduction area. Predation will probably not be significant enough to hold back the growth of the herd.

The elk will be sharing range with far more numerous white-tailed deer. While the two species compete for food and habitat, their needs are different enough that they coexist and thrive.

As time goes by, the release point and study area itself will probably fade to insignificance. “They’re going to go where they want to go,” says Schrage. “Agriculture conflicts are on everybody’s radar.” So are vehicle collisions. Says Schrage, “I think that’s one thing we’re gonna need to watch and address.”

As the Fond du Lac final report notes, “To be successful this project will require support from and close cooperation with the Minnesota DNR and other public and private partners.” The DNR is participating by staffing up with Kelsie LaSharr’s elk coordinator position.

“My role is twofold,” she says. “It’s continuing to manage the elk we have in the northwest, but then also partnering with Fond du Lac on making sure that the restoration efforts are also successful.”

Other partners include the affected counties, nonprofits such as the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, and representatives from agencies such as the state Department of Agriculture, which is responsible for responding to and in some circumstances compensating for elk damage to farm products. (Moreover, the DNR can provide financial assistance to prevent damage by, for example, installing fence panels to protect stored silage.)

But those are issues for the future. For now, the big hurdles have been addressed. Beginning next winter and spring, elk are on track to repopulate a portion of Minnesota where they haven’t existed for more than a century.

I suggest to Schrage he is enjoying the payoff of patience and more than a decade of work—“the fruition of a long process.”

He laughs. “It ain’t fruition yet. When we open the door and the elk walk out, then I will have a cigar.”