10 Minutes of Elk Migrating in a Blizzard

Elk migration in the Rocky Mountains is often driven by snow events, which make animals head out of the mountains for the winter, and toward deserts where there is less snow. In 2018 we captured a large number of elk migrating in a ten-minute period on a motion-activated trail camera. This video is fun to watch, but it is also very useful to biologists who want to classify the number of cows, calves, and bulls in a given herd. The cow-calf ratio can help give an idea of whether the population is growing or declining. For teachers: Ask students to identify how many animals, age of animals, and sex of animals walk by in the video. Teachers can choose how long to show the video, depending on time (the video is 6 minutes). In addition, teachers can create a scenario where after conducting their population count students will apply a population model to estimate the Elk population in that herd. Film credits: WMI filmmaker and lifelong elk hunter Greg Nickerson teamed up with elk biologist T