Arizona wildlife officials to help West Virginia restore elk population

PHOENIX — Arizona wildlife officials will send 60 elk to West Virginia next year to help that state repopulate the animal a century after it was last there.

The Arizona Game and Fish Commission has agreed to capture and transport five dozen elk as part of West Virginia’s elk restoration project.

The commission approved the request from West Virginia in a meeting last week.

“Additional translocations in the next 2-4 years may be considered pending the success of this translocation and the status of our elk populations here [in Arizona],” Amber Munig, a big-game supervisor for Arizona’s agency, said in an email to the Charleston Gazette-Mail.

The West Virginia Division of Natural Resources said the elk will be caught between January and March using helicopters and safe trapping techniques.

After capture, the animals will be quarantined. Later, they will be loaded into livestock haulers and eventually released at the Tomblin Wildlife Management Area in Logan County.

Nearly two dozen of the deer family species from Kentucky have made the habitat their home since late last year.

Paul Johansen, chief of the division’s Wildlife Resources Section, said the animal was once native to West Virginia but disappeared more than a century ago.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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