CONSERVED FOREVER
Protecting Ozarks Elk Country
PHOTO: Russ Powell
by Lee Lamb
In the mid-1980s when the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation was germinating in the tiny town of Troy, Montana, across the country in northwestern Arkansas a newly restored elk herd was also taking root.
Eastern elk, the subspecies native to Arkansas, had been extirpated by overhunting and habitat loss from the state by 1840. Confident that wild wapiti still had a place in The Natural State, between 1981 and 1985 the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (GFC) released 112 Rocky Mountain elk from Colorado and Nebraska at five sites along the corridor of the 94,000-acre Buffalo National River (America’s first designated national river).
The herd grew and expanded its range, including into the adjacent state-owned Gene Rush Wildlife Management Area (WMA). Tucked between the Buffalo National River to the south and the Ozark National Forest to the north, the WMA typifies the lush, rugged Ozark Mountains of which it is a part. Steep mountains, rolling hills, hardwood forests and crystal clear streams provide habitat for elk, white-tailed deer, black bears, turkeys, quail and songbirds.
The bulk of the 20,000-acre Gene Rush WMA was purchased from private businesses and landowners by the GFC in two major segments between 1966 and 1980. The acquisition of smaller tracts of land over the years within and adjacent to the management area continues to expand its footprint.
One such purchase occurred in 2000 when RMEF—with help from the Arkansas Game and Fish Foundation and the National Wild Turkey Federation—acquired the Dixie Point property, a 200-acre private inholding within the WMA, and conveyed it to the GFC. Formerly farmland, the property’s mix of forest and meadow habitat and five natural springs provides critical winter range for elk and one of the best water sources in the area for wildlife.
RMEF helped permanently protect another 314 acres adjacent to the WMA in 2007 when RMEF stalwarts Bert and Cheryl Haralson and Rick and Penney Oncken purchased the Lick Mountain property and donated a voluntary conservation agreement (aka conservation easement) to the foundation. Surrounded on three sides by the WMA, the property was prime fodder for subdivision and development. In 2018, the property sold to the GFC to be managed as part of the Gene Rush WMA.
These projects weren’t the first for RMEF in Arkansas. In 1992 RMEF and the GFC launched extensive, ongoing habitat work on the Gene Rush WMA aimed at improving forage for elk and encouraging their use of public lands. Efforts include creating wildlife openings, completing prescribed burns, treating invasive vegetation, discing and seeding food plots, restoring fire breaks and reducing erosion.
All told, RMEF and its partners have completed 110 conservation and hunting heritage outreach projects in Arkansas with a combined value of more than $5.4 million. These projects conserved and enhanced nearly 81,000 acres of habitat and opened or improved public access to more than 500 acres across Arkansas’ elk country.
Today more than 400 elk roam The Natural State, and the GFC has offered a limited elk hunt since 1998.
