(elk bugle)
- [Narrator] Haunting ghostly trumpets
echo around the volcano.
Just a couple of miles
north of the crater of Mount Saint Helens,
sits a zone chiefly reserved for researchers and wildlife.
(elk calling)
(elk running)
Here, large herds of elk regularly criss-cross
the pumice plain.
(elk bugling)
Their plaintive bugling, belies their size.
(elk bugling)
- For a big animal like that,
part of that bugle is this shrill,
kinda whistle thing, almost like a calliope.
It's a really amazing sound to hear that out in the woods.
(elk bugling)
- [Narrator] It could be an alarm bark,
warning the herd of danger nearby.
Most of the year, elk largely separate along gender lines.
Bulls form bachelor herds.
They're very social, more so than deer or moose.
(antlers clashing)
Often, the males spar.
But it's not serious,
these are mock fights.
(antlers clashing)
However, the games come to an end during breeding season.
Each autumn, the rut resumes,
a time to jockey for more females
by gaining dominance over other males,
often by force.
It is then that the hills echo with the music of bulls
bugling their best love songs.
(elk bugling)
A strong bull can attract a harem of 20 cows or more.
Pity the young bull with only four cows,
who accidentally heads over a hill
directly into the path of a much more successful bull.
The powerful elk has just one antler,
probably lost in a previous battle for dominance.
The cows idle nearby to watch a battle for their affections.
Even one antler is enough to intimidate,
this time the confrontation takes only a moment.
The younger bull gives up his cows, without a fight.
- And that's enough for that other elk
that would-be interloper,
to turn around and high tail it out of there.
(water gently flowing)
- [Narrator] The young bull wanders off empty handed.
There will be plenty of opportunities to court again.
Here at Mount Saint Helens,
elk populations have surged into the thousands.
(elk stampeding)
That's a remarkable change from 30 years ago.
(volcano erupting)
- Stop and think for a second,
on May 18th, 1980,
all elk, as well as other large mammals
were instantly killed over an area of 230 square miles.
Immediately after the eruption,
there were no elk on the landscape.
- [Narrator] No one really had a clue
how long it would be before life might return
to the devastated terrain.
Elk were among the very first.
- [Charlie] They came back in immediately
because these animals are capable of traveling
a long distance in a relatively short amount of time.
But what happened is the population
really, really increased dramatically after the eruption,
far greater than anyone had anticipated.
(rocks rattling)
- [Narrator] Charlie Crisafulli has spend his entire career
studying this volcanic landscape.
He's a biologist with the US Forest Service.
He has watched as plants
and animals returned to the prime blast zone.
Many of the trees that took root
have failed to become trees,
because they're the elks' favorite food.
A black cottonwood that could be
15 years old and 30 feet tall,
instead sprawls like a squat five foot shrub.
- It's because elk keep coming
and they nip each of these leaders.
And as a result of constantly being pruned back,
and constantly putting out new shoots,
instead of a tree growth form,
we have this bonsai type of shrub form.
- [Narrator] Elk have a profound impact
on the Mount Saint Helens landscape.
In just one hour,
a large herd can graze a patch so completely,
Charlie says the progression of plants
will be altered for a decade.
- [Charlie] 'Course, during the rut,
the bulls just really knock the heck outta the vegetation
through working them with their antlers, as well as hooves.
- [Narrator] More elk than ever seem to be heading
for the volcanic mudflow zones,
down along the Toutle river.
That's because, up above,
timber companies replanted the hills.
(birds chirping)
The forest has grown tall now.
Little sunlight gets through,
so there are fewer shrubs below.
Elk food doesn't grow well anymore.
- [Charlie] One thing for sure,
is as these plantations have grown,
the ability of the Mount Saint Helens landscape
to support elk has decreased dramatically.
- They are doing reasonably well,
although we do know that nutritionally,
this particular herd in Washington
is not at a nutritional, a real high nutritional level,
even going into the fall.
- [Narrator] Biologist, Brian Calkins,
works for the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife.
He says, some plants are more nutritious than others
and the elk need every bit of nutritional energy
to fatten up to survive cold winter months.
Scientists go to great lengths to learn if the elk
have enough fat on their frames.
(helicopter landing)
- Our chases are pretty exciting,
they are short,
but we've got it down to a science.
Shooting a tranquilizer,
it's actually a two drug combination,
trying to hit them in the large muscles,
usually the butt.
- [Narrator] Within three to seven minutes,
the elk lies down in a deep sleep.
- We want that animal to be healthy the whole time,
we want it to breath well
we want it's heart to beat well,
we want it to lie down and go to sleep nicely.
(helicopter blades spinning)
- [Narrator] A state Fish and Wildlife team
moves in for a rapid-fire health exam,
complete with portable ultrasound.
- What she's doing,
she's checking to see if the cows are pregnant
and then she's also checking to see
how much fat they have over there back,
to study their condition.
- There's a fat layer that's seven millimeters,
a lot of animals are doing out in the forest,
they don't have a measurable amount of fat on them
and that's typical for this time here.
- [Narrator] During two recent years,
winter turned especially harsh.
The elk burned through their fat reserves fast,
many started dying.
Disturbing video of starving elk made the news
and prompted a public uproar.
(elk crying)
The Department of Fish and Wildlife
was pressured to feed the elk,
which it did for two winters,
but there are serious drawbacks.
Feeding attracts more elk than ever to one spot,
then disease can spread
and the food isn't something elk are used to.
Their stomachs may not be able to process it.
- There've been elk and deer
studies in other regions,
where these animals have full stomachs,
yet they are starving and they die.
- We're never really in favor
of artificial feeding,
if we can avoid it.
The second year that we fed the animals here,
we actually had our highest winter mortality,
that we've ever had and it was a very severe winter
and the animals concentrated here
partially because of the feeding we were doing.
- [Narrator] Despite the feedings, 150 elk died.
The next year when feeding stopped the winter was mild.
They found just one elk dead.
- You know, the question is,
did you save any animals by feeding them?
And then I can't really say
that we can answer that question,
yes or no.
- [Narrator] There's another key question?
Are there too many elk out here for this land to sustain?
(helicopter blades spinning)
To know, biologists need a more accurate count.
So when they do a medical test,
they often also attach a radio collar.
- We put the radio collar on it,
we put an ear tag on it
and then we use the antidote and wake him up.
And all of that happens, sometimes, within 20 minutes.
- [Narrator] It used to be that the elk would then lie
for hours until they came to on their own.
Now, a revolutionary drug, allows the scientist
to reverse the tranquilizer within minutes.
- [McQorquodale] When they first wake up,
they're probably a little bit groggy
and when you see them take their first three or four steps
their steps are a little high, their heads a little bit high
but by the time, usually they are 100 yards away,
they are back to normal.
(helicopter blades spinning)
- [Narrator] During future aerial surveys,
they'll be able to home in on the radio collars.
- The most important thing
is that we're working on developing and refining
a better population assessment approach here
so that we have more confidence in our estimates of actually
how many elk are running around on this landscape.
- [Narrator] There's a lot less habitat for elk
in this landscape,
thanks to the big floods of 1996.
(rapids flowing fast)
Nearly 300 acres of riverside grazing land disappeared.
- [Calkins] Just washed away, washed downstream.
(machinery rattling)
- [Narrator] The state of Washington
would like to re-create that land,
but they're not going to just dump a lot of dirt
and watch it get washed away.
This, they hope, will be land recovery in slow motion.
They're building structures
out into the path of the Toutle river,
hoping to actually divert its course over years.
- And you can see the material deposited
on the upstream side of it,
and eventually, with higher flows,
it will probably fill in below it too.
The structures in a sense are really a short term measure
to slow down the erosion here.
The riparian zone is really the long term stability measure
that we need.
- [Narrator] If enough sediment piles up
and enough plants and trees take root to hold it in place.
They just might be able
to shrink the footprint of the river.
This is riparian restoration,
not for fish, but for elk habitat.
(strong winds blowing)
Overall, across this protected volcanic monument,
elk have done very well.
There is one piece of nature's former balance,
still missing.
(wild howling)
Wolves.
No one has plans to bring them in,
but Charlie Crisafulli predicts they will arrive
on their own, perhaps soon.
- [Charlie] The wolves have been moving
throughout Western North America
and they're likely to get to the west slope of the Cascades
and there's not a place on the west side
of the Cascade mountains that are more suitable,
perhaps optimal,
for wolves right now, than at Mount Saint Helens.
- [Narrator] In the meantime,
bulls face competition from the occasional coyote
and from a small amount of hunting,
recently allowed in the volcanic monument.
- Red, three, two, zero.
- [Narrator] Biologists continue their efforts
to support the herds and restore their land.
Mount Saint Helens and the mudflows
that stretch for miles downstream from the volcano
have become critical winter range for thousands of elk.
(antlers clashing)