The Ya Ha Tinda elk monitoring project is one of the longest-running elk studies in the world. Since 2000, researchers at the Universities of Alberta and Montana have worked collaboratively to investigate factors influencing the herd’s dynamics such as: human impact (harvest, recreation, habitat management), natural factors (predation, climate), and natural vegetation dynamics.

Evelyn Merrill at the University of Alberta and Mark Hebblewhite at the University of Montana and their students have captured and radio-collared over 225 adult female elk and tracked their resource selection, movements, survival and migratory patterns. They initiated the study to understand changes in elk migration relative to historic studies done in the 1980s. Their focus since the beginning has been the demography of migration. They developed pioneering methods to combine ground plant monitoring with remote sensing to build dynamic landscape models of forage quality. In 2016, they were awarded a National Science Foundation - Long Term Research in Environmental Biology grant to continue research for the next five to 10 years.

In addition, Alberta Fish and Wildlife has been conducting aerial surveys of the herd starting in the 1970s to document the herd’s population dynamics.