Parentage analysis is another important aspect of the project. The researchers hope to identify both parents of all 50 elk that have been born in West Virginia since the reintroduction. This will help determine if members of the two source populations are mating with each other.

The parentage analysis will also allow Welsh and Cook to see if elk from Kentucky are moving across the border and breeding with West Virginia elk.

“The Kentucky population was a reintroduction that took place around 2000,” Cook said. “And they’re the poster child for elk reintroductions in the East because they brought in 1,500 elk from six different states. They went for the quantity and diversity approach, which has worked very well. And they’ve got over 10,000 now.”

When it comes to maintaining genetic distinction, there’s no way to know how a population will behave. Welsh said an elk herd in the Smoky Mountains also comes from separate states, but the two groups are not breeding.

“In other locations, they are mixing,” she said. “So, we don’t really know what to expect, and it’s going to be interesting.”

Elk populations have continually existed west of the Mississippi, in the Rocky Mountains and into Canada. Restoration efforts to reestablish elk populations in the East began in the late 1890s, but early reintroductions failed because there was no way to monitor herds progress. Now, Welsh sees the research as a vital step in the restoration of elk in the East.

“Our lab has done a couple of these kind of reintroduction assessments after the fact,” she said. “It’s not often done in conservation and wildlife management, in terms of figuring out whether or not a reintroduction was successful, but it’s needed.”