The first time I saw an elk in Jasper, “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones was topping the charts.  

It was 1965, and we were in the middle of a family vacation to the west coast that had started in Regina, Saskatchewan. It was one of those classic mid-60s family driving vacations—we even had the station wagon with clichéd wood panel siding. My siblings and I would lie down in the back, reading Archie comics while the miles rolled past (seat belts laws were yet to come). Other signs of the times included our black and white TV (“Gilligan’s Island” was a fave), the average hourly wage being $2.33, and the Montreal Canadiens having just won the Stanley Cup (the first of six in a row).

The 60s were also a very different era for Jasper’s elk—but without the long hair or acid trips. Indeed, the status of elk in Jasper has been almost constantly changing since Europeans arrived in the 1800s. 

Bridging the gap

Elk (Cervus canadensis) are a species of mammal belonging to the deer family, or Cervidae. The elk is the second largest deer after the moose (Alces alces, another Jasper resident). A big bull elk can weigh as much as 1,100 pounds, while females top out at about 600. They like to hang out in groups, and prefer to have some open areas for grazing, but also some forest for cover. 

Until recently, our elk were thought to be one and the same as the red deer (Cervus elaphus) of Europe and western Asia, but they’ve now been split into two separate species. Confusingly, in eastern Asia (from Siberia to Kazakstan) there are seven subspecies of elk much like ours (not red deer). Ancestors of these eastern Asian elk are thought to have colonized North American between 15,000 and 11,000 years ago when there was a land bridge between Asia and North America, eventually evolving into our Canadian elk. Elk are also known as Wapiti, a word derived from the Cree word ‘waapiti’ (ᐙᐱᑎ) meaning “white rump.” 

The sheer number of these big animals in 1965 is what impressed my six year old brain…that and the fact that they were freely wandering around town. You can think of elk as a “keystone species,” meaning that changes to their population can have far-reaching effects on other aspects of the ecosystem. The number of elk also has an important effect on human use of the park and town. 

Impressive ungulates

Back in the 1800s, early fur trapping records from the Jasper area made little mention of elk, probably because they had been almost entirely shot off throughout Alberta after the introduction of firearms. There were still next to no elk around when Jasper National Park started out in 1907 (known as Jasper Park Forest Reserve back then). One of Jasper’s first superintendents, Maynard Rogers, had been to Yellowstone National Park in the U.S. and was impressed by the elk wandering around the town, attracting tourists. He was so dazzled that in 1920, he imported 88 elk from Yellowstone and released them near the Jasper townsite, in the hopes of increasing Jasper’s draw to well-heeled visitors.

Another animal in the 1800s that really took it on the chin due to hunting and trapping was the wolf. Wolves weren’t completely wiped out in the Jasper area, but they came close. Even when the park was established in 1907, park management just kept right on killing wolves. In fact, the wolf cull program continued up until 1959 (coyotes and cougars were also targeted). 

As a result, when those 88 American elk were released near town, they encountered a ton of food and faced very few predators. It was a recipe for unhindered population growth, and local elk proliferated to an estimated 3,000 animals by 1936. 

Unintended consequences

Except for a few harsh winters which resulted in mass die-offs, the next 37 years saw a continuation of high elk numbers. The first winter die-off, in 1950, happened while wolves were still being persecuted, so elk numbers quickly bounced back. But the next one happened in 1973 after wolves had started to rebound, so this time when elk numbers crashed to less than 1,000, they didn’t return as readily. Predation was keeping the elk in check. 

The decades of very high elk numbers between the 1930s and 1970s had an unintended consequence in Jasper National Park: the reproduction of aspen and other favourite elk foods ground to a halt. Biologists of the day did a lot of hand-wringing over the over-grazing and habitat destruction wrought by the elk, and this food shortage likely contributed to the aforementioned winter die-offs.

The super-abundant elk had also spread into higher altitudes, and were even thought to be out-competing bighorn sheep and caribou. In response to the elk overpopulation, Parks Canada conducted culls, with the some of the meat being sent to Indigenous communities (elk in inconvenient spots were just left where they were shot). Between 1943 and 1969, 2,655 elk were harvested. 

Between 1970 and 1990, elk numbers remained more or less constant at about 1,000 animals. Between 1995 and 2009, however, elk declined to the approximately 400 animals that we have today (the 2023 population estimate was 317, but there were likely a few more in areas not surveyed). It is highly probable that car strikes had something to do with this; the number of vehicles on the Jasper highways more than doubled during that time span, and the elk mortality rate due to vehicles varied somewhere between 10 and 20 percent per year. The lower elk grazing rates also meant that aspen could once again reproduce—starting in the 1970s, saplings began to survive.

Townie troubles

As the population declined, elk became increasingly concentrated around the Jasper townsite (although there were, and still are, quite a few elk in the northeast and southeast areas of the park). This brings us to another important issue: the sometimes uneasy coexistence between elk and humans. The original intention of Superintendent Rogers to have elk strolling around town has succeeded only too well. Although as a child in the hippie era, I thought elk in town was a groovy idea, it turns out that townie elk have caused quite a few problems. You can understand why an elk might want to stay close to town: there are darned-few predators, and there is also plenty to eat (namely residents’ tulips and Kentucky blue grass). 

And while they are fairly docile much of the time, there are two situations where you want to give elk a very wide berth. One is during calving season: don’t get between a mother and her young calf. And the second is during the rut: do not get between a bull elk and any females a bull elk might have a hankering to mate with. Ignoring these rules has led to many broken human bones and lost teeth, not to mention dead pets and punctured cars. 

While bears get a fair bit of the press, elk/human encounters are far more numerous and often have more severe outcomes. An added wrinkle is that very young calves will be hunted by bears, so in calving season you have to watch out for both angry mother elk and bears defending their kills—which is why the JNP resource conservation staff are so conscientious in moving newborn elk out of the campgrounds.

To further improve elk/human diplomacy, there is also some fencing off of high-conflict areas (such as our community parks and schoolyards). Finally, when they get too rowdy, our ever-vigilant Parks Canada staff nudge the elk out of town.

Far out

So, while it may be tempting to think that conditions in Jasper have remained the same over the years, remember back to the hippie era, when hair was long, jeans were bell-bottomed and Jasper elk were so numerous that they were eating the place out of house and home! Nowadays, TV is not only colour, but “smart,” the average hourly wage is $31.63, and a hockey team from Las Vegas has claimed the most recent Stanley Cup. The Stones however, just keep on rolling, reaching number one last year on the UK charts. For an old hippy, there’s something satisfying about that. 

Mark Bradley // info@thejasperlocal.com