CHARLESTON, W.Va. – West Virginia’s elk herd will get another boost of imported animals.  Governor Jim Justice announced during his State of the State Address the state is in the process of bringing another group of elk from the Land Between the Lakes National Recreation Area near Cadiz, Kentucky to the Tomblin Wildlife Management Area in southern West Virginia.

“We’ve got 40 more elk on the way to West Virginia,” Justice said during Wednesday’s State of the State Address.

But Justice also announced a DNR worker had been injured in the process.

MetroNews was able to confirm the details Wednesday night.

At around noon Wednesday the DNR worker was getting into a truck at the Lakes Recreational Area when a gas-powered tranquilizer gun with a double safety device failed and it discharged into him. He was not holding the gun at the time, officials said.

DNR officials on the scene administered NARCAN and called for an ambulance. The worker was flown to a hospital in Nashville, Tenn. where he was still in ICU as of Wednesday night.

Justice said he was told the worker was going to be okay.

The worker’s name has not been released.

Elk plans

The new group of elk will mark the third time West Virginia has received elk from the U.S. Forest Service facility.  The original reintroduction included 24 animals from L-B-L in 2016.  The state received another 18 animals in 2018.  West Virginia also received a large shipment of elk from the state of Arizona after the first two transfers from the federal facility in western Kentucky.

West Virginia Division of Natural Resources officials expect to received 40 elk in the latest transfer, half of which are expected to be females and half of those females are expected to already be bred.

West Virginia Elk Project Leader Randy Kelley expected the transfer to provide a much needed boost to the slowly growing population of elk in the southern West Virginia coalfields.

“We’re to the point now where we have more home grown elk than we have imported elk, which is why we’re so young from a population dynamics standpoint. That’s just the natural order of things,” said Kelley.

A number of the original elk reintroduced into West Virginia since 2016 have died from a variety of different natural occurrences.  Brain worm claimed a number of the elk.  Among the Arizona additions to the herd, many died waiting to be released in a mandatory federal quarantine during the hottest months of summer.  That’s not expected to be an issue with the current transfer.

Relationships between the federal and state agencies are vastly improved, and the elk from L-B-L are considered a different situation.

Since the Arizona elk were from a free ranging herd, the stipulations were different.   The Land Between the Lakes facility is considered, by regulation, a “captive cervid facility.”  The animals there are regularly tested for bovine tuberculosis.  The testing and quarantine requirements for transport are far less stringent under the captive circumstances.

The elk, which will eventually be released in Logan County, have already been rounded up, tested for TB, and are awaiting clearance of negative tests to be transported to West Virginia.  They’ll be released in a “soft release” at the release facility on the Tomblin Wildlife Management Area.

The LBL facility is run by the U.S. Forest Service which is a division of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.   According to Kelley, although by regulation a captive cervid facility, the elk have blood lines which trace to a wild population.

“They’re from a wild herd at Elk Island in Alberta, Canada. They’re not an inherent farm raised elk. The blood line is pure to wild elk in Canada,” Kelley explained.

Other states have used animals from the Land Between the Lakes facility to start elk reintroductions in other parts of the United States.  The facility also supplied the original elk released by the National Park Service in the Great Smokey Mountains.

Kelley said it was unlikely West Virginia would be able to get another round of elk from the wild herd in Arizona.  Since their transport to the Mountain State, regulations with regard to CWD and transporting wild cervids have changed dramatically.

“I doubt we’ll be able to do that again until we have a live animal test for CWD,” he said.

Several states and universities are involved in various research projects trying to find a reliable test for the virus.  So far, the only known reliable test requires the animal to be dead.

Kelley, in an address to state lawmakers during December interim meetings, indicated the state has roughly 100 to 110 elk on the ground.  When quizzed about the possibility of when a controlled hunt for elk could be allowed, he indicated other states which have had successful reintroductions have not opened up a season until the herd reached 200 to 300 animals.  He expected that to be the benchmark for West Virginia to begin consideration of a hunting season as well.

Teams from the West Virginia DNR will collaborate with officials from the West Virginia Department of Agriculture and volunteers from the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation to transport the elk from western Kentucky to West Virginia in the coming days.