At 10:19 PM 4/24/99 -0700, denniskrockwell at juno.com wrote:
>Lydia,
>
>If you read the journals of Lewis and Clark you discover that elk were,
>in fact, animals of open country 200 years ago.
>It was only the pressure of mankind's hand on the land that drove them
>into the forests.

This is a bit simplistic. Elk are known to use forests for
shelter in winter, for instance. At such times, L&C also
holed up, in or near indian villages. So they weren't out
and about being stellar naturalists of the wild and wicked
world during this season.

And, of course, L&C chose river courses and open country as
much as possible for their travels. They spent a lot of
time in mountains and forests, true enough.

L&C teaches us a lot about North America in those days, but
you must keep in mind that their data is a poster child for
the phrase "selective sample". We shouldn't expect anything
different, their mission was to make it to the Pacific,
prove or disprove the existence of the Northwest Passage,
and collect whatever natural history data they could while
doing so.

They did a great job at it. But you shouldn't presume that
their data collection was worth anything more than their
mission (statement? ugh) entailed.

> The US army's Yakima Firing Range, the Hanford
>Reservation (including the Waluke Slope and Arid Lands Ecology Reserve)
>and some of the abutting lands actually contain a rapidly growing herd of
>elk. In fact, if it were not for a little hunting pressure around the
>edges of these areas they would have probably eaten themselves out of
>house and home by now, given the lack serious sized predators in this
>area.

Elk are very adaptive, no doubt. To point out that they thrive in
open lands is not proof that they've not historically thrived in
many forested areas as well. They're adapted to live in both, and
early data showing them on open lands does not disprove that they
lived in forested lands as well.



- Don Baccus, Portland OR <dhogaza at pacifier.com>
Nature photos, on-line guides, and other goodies at
http://donb.photo.net