Roosevelt Elk: The Animal That Helped Save a Park

The Roosevelt elk are the largest subspecies of elk in North America, and they can be seen in the lowland areas of Olympic National Park throughout the year, including along the Hoh River valley south of Forks. A mature bull can weigh more than a thousand pounds and carry antlers that spread more than five feet across. They travel in separate herds for much of the year, cows and calves together, bulls apart, coming together in the autumn rut when the forest fills with the bugling of males challenging their rivals.

The subspecies carries the name of Theodore Roosevelt, who established Mount Olympus National Monument in nineteen oh nine in large part to protect the elk. By the time he acted, the population on the Olympic Peninsula had been reduced from tens of thousands to a few hundred. His monument designation stopped the commercial hunting that had devastated the herds, and the population has since recovered substantially.

In the Hoh Rain Forest, elk are part of the ecological maintenance system. They graze on mosses and ferns on the forest floor, browse the lower branches of young trees, and create openings in the understory that allow new growth to establish itself. What ecologists call ecosystem engineering happens in the Hoh in a forest where it has been going on continuously for thousands of years, largely without interruption. Their paths become trails, their grazing shapes what the next generation of the forest looks like. You are watching, in slow motion, how forests and large animals have built each other over deep time.