Andrea the Elk Spotter by Dan Risch

(1)Andrea Schuhmann was awakened from her bunk at 4:30 a. m. She bundled up for a chilly helicopter ride. So began another day at her summer job, helping to spot newborn elk in the wilderness for the Kentucky Elk Reintroduction Program.

(2)Elk are a type of large deer once common in North America. About 150 years ago, all the elk that had once lived in Kentucky had disappeared. They had been hunted or forced off the land where people built new roads and towns. Today, the Kentucky Elk Reintroduction Program brings elk into the state from other areas to help grow the population again. Andrea’s job with the program was to find baby elk and check them to make sure they were healthy.

(3)Less than an hour after Andrea bundled up, gray dawn traced the mountains. A mother elk trotted away from her newborn calf’s hidden bed. After a few steps, the faint thumping of helicopter propellers drifted over the grassland. The mother’s head snapped up abruptly. But the sound faded away, and she moved off in search of breakfast.

(4)The helicopter came closer. Beside the pilot sat Professor John Cox of the University of Kentucky. Behind them sat Andrea. She was watching a screen connected to a sensor that scanned the ground below, detecting the body heat of any newborn elk hiding in the brush or grass.

(5)The screen’s black-and-gray picture lit up quickly with a coin-sized white spot. “I’ve got one!” shouted Andrea. “I think.”

(6)The pilot circled to let Andrea view the spot from different angles. John radioed the teams on the ground. “Yes! There’s one for sure,” Andrea said. The white spot remained frozen as they hovered. After directing a ground team to the calf, the helicopter flew off to search elsewhere.

Five Baby Elk

(7)For the rest of the morning, the four ground teams scrambled through the open woods and over grasslands on small four-wheeled vehicles looking for newborn calves. Guided by the helicopter team, they found the baby elk one at a time and gently and quickly held, studied, and released them.

(8)Altogether, they found five baby elk that morning, each one still as a stone on its grassy bed. The 600-pound mothers barked at the ground teams from yards away but did not come near.

(9)The ground teams weighed each baby by lifting it in a laundry bag-like sling. Most of the young elk were 35 to 60 pounds, good weights for elk up to two weeks old.

(10)For each elk, the ground teams recorded the date it was found in the field. They noted the weight and the place where each elk was found and took small blood samples. Finally, they attached bright-green tags to both ears and fitted each newborn with a collar. Sturdy and designed to get bigger with the growing elk baby, each collar held a radio transmitter, a small device that would send information back to the team, so the elk could be tracked through the mountains.

(11)None of the young elk had been “runners.” Instead of fleeing, they had hugged the ground instinctively as they do when danger is nearby. The ground crews completed the tagging and collaring with ease.

(12)By autumn, Andrea was glad to have had a chance to help. “I’ve always been interested in animals and nature,” she said. “I really want to make sure that the wildlife I see out there is going to be around in the future.”

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