Tracking Nebraska’s elk: Scientists study growing population

AINSWORTH, Neb. - Elk once roamed freely across the Great Plains, much like buffalo. However, by the 1880s, they had been wiped out in Nebraska. Their gradual return began after a repopulation effort in eastern Wyoming in the 1960s, and today, Nebraska’s elk population continues to grow.

To better understand and manage this expansion, the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission has partnered with University of Nebraska–Lincoln scientist John Benson to conduct the first statewide elk study. As part of the research, 307 Aviation out of Worland, Wyoming, recently used helicopters to track and collar elk, shooting nets and dart guns to safely capture the animals before fitting them with GPS collars.

“At the core, this is a very basic project and looks at elk ecology in Nebraska,” said Nebraska Game and Parks Commission biologist Scott Fesmire. “The GPS collars give us the ability to track these animals for a little over two years.”

So far, the team has collared elk across several regions: three bulls north of Ainsworth, two bulls and four cows northeast of Burwell, ten cows and six bulls south of North Platte, and ten cows and four bulls near Broadwater and Lewellen.

Capturing the elk has proven challenging in certain areas. “We struggled to find elk near Ainsworth, but attribute that mostly to the weather conditions,” Fesmire said. “It was bitterly cold with wind, so the elk tucked into the cedars, and the helicopter crew was unable to find them. Cedars have proven difficult to capture elk in, but things improved as we moved westward into more of a pine-dominated landscape.”

In addition to the collars, Benson conducts ultrasounds in the field to assess the elk’s body condition. All elk captured in 2025 appeared to be in excellent health, with researchers discovering a pregnancy rate of about 90%.

“Movement data lets us look at resource selection — things such as bedding, feeding and calving areas. We can also look at larger-scale movement and home range sizes. This is important to us from a management perspective as some elk will use multiple hunting units during a single hunting season. We are also able to figure out how much time elk are spending in places where they could cause damage, like ag fields and stack yards,” said Fesmire.

The collars are also key in determining causes of death. So far, hunting has been the leading cause, followed by disease. From there, causes range from mountain lions and falling trees to vehicle collisions and starvation.

“Collars have shown us that elk respond quickly to hunting pressure and will respond deliberately when pressured,” said Fesmire.

Some elk have been recorded traveling long distances. The longest in-state migration observed (summer to winter range and back) was more than 100 miles, with animals frequently moving between Nebraska and South Dakota. One elk, collared near Lewellen, Nebraska, spent the summer of 2024 in Colorado while also traveling through northwest Kansas.

The study is expected to help the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission develop better management strategies, including setting sustainable hunting quotas to maintain a stable elk population while minimizing damage to crops, fences and haystacks.

This marks Nebraska’s first statewide elk study, expanding beyond previous research that focused solely on the Pine Ridge area. The last major study, published in 2005 by UNL scientists, concluded that the Pine Ridge region alone could support up to 600 elk without significant impacts to landowners.