One of the least known animal species in Arkansas is the elk, a large relative to the white-tail deer. Many people assume that the elk was brought into Arkansas, but it has a long history in the state. Elk were native to the United States, and Arkansas was one of the states that they inhabited. The Arkansas Game and Fish Commission (AGFC) has monitored their population throughout their existence in Arkansas. In the 1840s, the subspecies native to Arkansas, the eastern elk, went extinct. In the 1930s though, the AGFC reintroduced a different species to the state, the Rocky Mountain elk. Once again, in the 1950s, this species went extinct. No one knows what happened to this large herd of elk. Finally, in 1981, the AGFC and local citizens chose
