Elk from Arizona Expected Next Year in West Virginia

West Virginia wildlife officials say 60 elk will come to the state next year through a partnership with their counterparts in Arizona.

The Arizona Game and Fish Commission has approved capture of five dozen elk to be transported east as part of West Virginia’s ongoing elk restoration project.

According to the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources, the elk will be caught sometime between January and March using helicopters and safe trapping techniques, held in quarantine then transported by livestock haulers and released at the Tomblin Wildlife Management Area in Logan County.

Nearly two dozen elk received from Kentucky in late 2016 are there.

Paul Johansen, chief of the division’s Wildlife Resources Section, says elk were once native to West Virginia but disappeared more than a century ago.