Rocky Mountain Elk Society

Serving Rural Colorado & Multigenerational Families

The Rocky Mountain Elk Society is the State’s newest Society, organized in February 2025. The Rocky Mountain Elk Society serves Colorado’s rural populations with an unique format.  Business meetings are held via Zoom, with activities, educational experiences, patriotic events and community service held in members local communities.  This format also works well for multigenerational families especially when they live in different states. For more information, please contact Senior Society President, Denice Dirks, at coDARdenice@gmail.com or 303.548.2230.

REDUCE – REUSE - RECYCLE!
The Rocky Mountain Elk Society is collecting plastic! What kind of plastic? That not often recycled by traditional neighborhood recycling programs. Plastic grocery bags, plastic overrap on multiple grocery items & ____. Join us to convert waste materials into reusable objects to prevent pollution on our lands and in our lakes. Partnering with TREX, Inc, once our Society has collected 1000 pounds of plastic, a bench made from Trex’s famous plastic recycling plant will be donated for the members of our Society to place in the state. Each bench shows what an impact our community can make at the grassroots level. This is only a small step, but we can make a difference. Recycling is one of the solutions that we can implement to improve our environment.

For more information and help the Society collect the plastic, reach out to Tanice Ramsperger @ ramsperger1@centurytel.net.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?
Creating a new Society brings the adventure and challenge of choosing an appropriate name that meets the standards of the National Society. The organizing members chose the Rocky Mountain Elk Society as the Elk are seen all around the state and each organizing member has them near their homes.  This magnificent creature holds great history in our country as it was hunted by those settling what became the United States, by the patriots of the Revolution and the frontiers as they moved west to settle new territories.

As Euro-Americans settled the Estes Valley, they hunted elk intensively, sending much of the meat to market in Denver. By 1890 few, if any, elk remained. In 1913 and 1914, before the national park's establishment, the Estes Valley Improvement Association and US Forest Service transplanted 49 elk from Yellowstone National Park to this area. Around the same time, an all-out effort began to eliminate predators including the gray wolf and the grizzly bear. The resulting decrease in predators and hands-off management of elk hastened the recovery of Rocky's elk population. The population grew to record high numbers in the late 1990's.  Today, Colorado boasts the largest population of Elk in the world.