{"id":227963,"date":"2026-01-05T04:48:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T04:48:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/227963\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T04:48:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T04:48:13","slug":"project-aiming-to-return-elk-to-uk-moves-forward","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/227963\/","title":{"rendered":"Project aiming to return elk to UK moves forward"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PAPA Media<\/p>\n

Elk could be reintroduced to wetlands in Nottinghamshire as part of an ongoing conservation project <\/p>\n

Wildlife experts said they had progressed in a project to reintroduce elk to wetlands in Nottinghamshire. <\/p>\n

Elk were once a native species to the UK, but they became extinct about 3,000 years ago, predominantly due to hunting.<\/p>\n

Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire wildlife trusts secured \u00a315,000 of funding from the Rewilding Britain charity<\/a> earlier this year to start feasibility studies into the animals’ return. <\/p>\n

Janice Bradley, from the Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust, said a disease risk assessment, expected by early next year, was a significant step. <\/p>\n

Ms Bradley, the charity’s head of nature recovery, said elk were a “very important megaherbivore”. <\/p>\n

“They’re a keystone species that has a phenomenal impact on wetland – particularly wetland environments – but a whole range of other different habitats,” she said. <\/p>\n

Elk and other herbivores’ impacts on their environments mean they can determine which other creatures thrive. <\/p>\n

\"PAPA Media<\/p>\n

Beavers were reintroduced to wetlands in the county in recent years and have brought many benefits, Nottinghamshire Wildlife Trust said<\/p>\n

Ms Bradley said where elk had survived in Europe, there was evidence of them “improving, enhancing and diversifying” those habitats to the benefit of other species. <\/p>\n

The disease risk assessment, carried out by a specialist veterinary consultant, will look at where the elk would come from, and the possibility of disease spreading from or to the species.<\/p>\n

Ms Bradley said elk were “living perfectly happy” across multiple European countries, with no evidence of disease transmission, but added the project still had to take a “robust approach”. <\/p>\n

Subject to a suitable risk assessment and further funding, the elk would be reintroduced firstly in a “very large wild-type enclosure” and in small numbers, Ms Bradley said.<\/p>\n

‘Down to funding’<\/p>\n

The space would be a large area of a nature reserve with fences around it to ensure the animals cannot roam around the floodplain – essentially a “halfway house”. <\/p>\n

She added: “Ultimately, we would hope to see wild elk roaming throughout the floodplains of Britain, starting with the Trent and Idle. But that’s some way off.” <\/p>\n

Ms Bradley is also part of a project that saw beavers return to the county in 2021 for the first time in at least 400 years. <\/p>\n

Like elk, beavers are herbivores and have brought “great benefit” to the local environment, according to the conservation expert. <\/p>\n

“We’ve already seen from our enclosed beavers, that the increase in species richness that they create in the habitats where they are, is just phenomenal,” she said. <\/p>\n

The next steps toward introducing elk include considering any identified risks, engaging with the public and landowners, and ensuring there is a suitable enclosure. <\/p>\n

“Like all these things, it’s down to funding,” Ms Bradley said. <\/p>\n

“The technical elements won’t be the hold-up, it’ll be the funding available for those logistics.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PA Media Elk could be reintroduced to wetlands in Nottinghamshire as part of an ongoing conservation project Wildlife…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227964,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[61,60,82,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-227963","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-ie","9":"tag-ireland","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}