Lessons Learned from the Extinction of an Elk Subspecies

There were massive elk herds living in Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Iowa, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and the Carolinas among other states. It may be hard to fathom elk once called these portions of the eastern United States home. Most either have none, or only a few hundred animals in modern times. Had they not been wiped out, the face of hunting in those states would be radically different than what most of us know today. This is the tragic story of what happened to this population of elk, and the conservation lessons we learned the hard way after wiping an entire subspecies off the face of the Earth forever.