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This is in Bell County, in rural Appalachia, which has a poverty rate of 38 percent and an average household income of just under $25,000, making it one of the poorest counties in the United States. Two independent consultants have estimated that it could draw more than 1 million annual visitors and add over $150 million per year to the regional economy. When Boone’s Ridge opens in 2022, it will offer a museum and opportunities for bird-watching and animal spotting. Ledford took his right hand off the wheel for a moment to appreciate it. The road sloped up and disappeared around a hill, and Mr. Ledford’s 12,000-acre property, which he and his business partner, Frank Allen, are developing into a nonprofit nature reserve called Boone’s Ridge. It was seen at the time as a route to many things: a highway, a strip mall, housing developments. 119, was constructed in 1998 by former Gov. “Having the elk is also economically important to Eastern Kentucky, whether that’s directly from hunting, the hunters that come in, or from wildlife viewing,” Jenkins said.On a bright morning early this spring, David Ledford sat in his silver pickup at the end of a three-lane bridge spanning a deep gorge in southeast Kentucky. Those hunting dollars are one more reason Jenkins said elk are important to Eastern Kentucky. Kentucky issued about 600 permits to hunt elk last year.
KENTUCKY ELK HUNTING LICENSE
Researchers plan to use helicopters to locate and capture hundreds of elk over the course of the study.įemale elk, known as “cow” elk will be fitted with devices that alert researchers when a calf is born, while male “bull” elk will be fitted with tracking collars.įunding for the study comes from a federal excise tax on sporting good equipment as well as in-state hunting license sales dollars, Jenkins said. The new study seeks to understand how Kentucky’s elk are surviving in this habitat.
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“Elk need grass to survive and so if you have this decline in the mining industry and this decline in the amount of grass being put on the landscape, you’re limiting the amount of habitat,” he said. Some of the most common grasslands in Eastern Kentucky are leftover from reclaimed mines, but as those lands mature, they become more shrubby and wooded. That makes for some interesting dynamics in eastern Kentucky, where forested knobs are more common than meadows. They need more grass than a whitetail, but less than your typical bovine. Jenkins describes the typical elk diet as somewhere between cattle and deer. We have almost a completely new Kentucky bred, Kentucky-born population.” “Now nearly all of those animals from the west are dead. When we looked at this information these were elk that were born into the west and brought into the east,” said Gabe Jenkins, deer and elk coordinator with the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources. Today, about 10,000 elk are spread among 16 eastern counties - as far west as McCreary and as far north and east as Johnson County.īeginning this month, the University of Kentucky and the Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources are teaming up to learn more about the commonwealth’s new generation of elk. In the late ‘90s Kentucky Fish and Wildlife began repopulating with elk from western states. Researchers are beginning a new three-year study looking at elk reproduction and survival more than two decades after they were first reintroduced to Kentucky.Įlk used to be native to Kentucky, but settlers’ unregulated hunting wiped them out before the start of the Civil War.