structural:scholar_edition
Introductions and reintroductions

As of 2014, population figures for all North American elk subspecies were around one million. Prior to the European colonization of North America, there were an estimated 10 million on the continent.

There are many past and ongoing examples of reintroduction into areas of the US. Elk were reintroduced in Michigan in 1918 after going extinct there in 1875. The Rocky Mountain elk subspecies was reintroduced by hunter-conservation organizations into the Appalachian region of the U.S. where the now extinct eastern elk once lived. They were reintroduced to Pennsylvania beginning in 1913 and throughout the mid-20th Century, and now remain at a stable population of approximately 1,400 individuals. Since the late 1990s, they were reintroduced and recolonized in the states of Wisconsin, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia and West Virginia. In the state of Kentucky, the elk population in 2022 had increased to over 15,000 animals. In 2016, a male elk, likely from the Smoky Mountains population, was sighted in South Carolina for the first time in nearly 300 years. Once locally extinct, dispersing elk are now regularly spotted in Iowa, although a wild population has not yet established. Since 2015, elk have also been reintroduced in a number of other states, including Missouri, and introduced to the islands of Etolin and Afognak in Alaska. Reintroduction of the elk into Ontario began in the early 20th century and is ongoing with limited success.

Elk and red deer were introduced to Argentina in the early 20th century. There they are now considered an invasive species, encroaching on Argentinian ecosystems where they compete for food with the indigenous Chilean huemul and other herbivores. This negative impact on native animal species has led the IUCN to identify the elk as one of the world's 100 worst invaders.

The introduction of deer to New Zealand began in the middle of the 19th century, and current populations are primarily European red deer, with only 15 percent being elk. In 1905 18 American wapiti were released in George Sound in the Fiordland National Park. In 1949 the New Zealand American Fiordland Expedition was undertaken to study the descendants of this release. There is significant hybridization of elk with red deer. These deer have had an adverse impact on forest regeneration of some plant species, as they consume more palatable species, which are replaced with those that are less favored by the elk. The long-term impact will be an alteration of the types of plants and trees found, and in other animal and plant species dependent upon them. As in Chile and Argentina, the IUCN has declared that red deer and elk populations in New Zealand are an invasive species.