Photo courtesy of Kentucky Department of Fish and Wildlife Resources Commission

A successful elk restoration program in Kentucky has been the impetus for Virginia officials looking into similar efforts.

RICHMOND -- Shunned for years, Rocky Mountain elk are finally being welcomed back into the state by Virginia wildlife officials.

At a meeting Tuesday, the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries board directed the agency's staff to undertake a pilot restoration program that calls for stocking 75 elk into Buchanan County, a rugged, economically depressed county where officials have been hoping for years to establish an elk herd.

"It's wonderful," said Buchanan County Administrator W.J. Caudill, who earlier had urged the board to actively restore elk to his county in hopes they would attract tourists and visiting hunters. "It was more than we expected."

It is unlikely that elk will be stocked in Virginia until at least the winter of 2012.

The state needs to acquire animals and make arrangements with landowners in Buchanan County, where nearly all of the land is in private ownership.

Bob Ellis, head of the department's wildlife division, said he will form a working group in the coming months to address key elements of the restoration program.

The agency also will try to determine how many elk are already in Virginia, after having crossed the state line from Kentucky, where a restoration program has been under way for more than a decade.

Virginia's program, which has a goal of establishing a herd in Buchanan County of no more than 400 animals, has an estimated cost of about $3 million over the next 12 years.

While stocking is probably at least 18 months away, the department took steps to try to protect elk already in the state.

The board proposed a regulation change that will put a moratorium on hunters killing elk, which currently may be taken during deer seasons and tagged with deer tags.

Because the proposal must undergo a public comment period, it could take effect no earlier than Oct. 5. Elk would still be fair game during at least the first couple of days of the early archery deer season.

The regulation change would reverse the cautious course taken by DGIF over the past decade.

Biologists were wary of disease, particularly chronic wasting disease, which can't be tested for on live animals.

But those concerns have waned as Kentucky's herd, which numbers close to 10,000, has proven to be disease-free.

With elk driving an economic boom in eastern Kentucky through hunting and tourism, DGIF officials decided about 10 months ago to revisit the possibility of a Virginia restoration program.

The adopted plan veered from the restoration option the agency had sought earlier this summer -- and even from the revised proposal that biologists showed up with Tuesday.

In June, a DGIF committee charged with studying elk restoration had recommended stocking 200 elk over three years in Buchanan, Dickenson and Wise counties.

The committee had decided those counties were most suited for a restoration of the animals, which are native to Virginia but were wiped out in the 1800s by unregulated hunting and habitat fragmentation.

However, community support, deemed critical by the committee, was lacking in some areas.

Boards of supervisors in Dickenson and Wise counties, as well as in some adjacent counties, opposed restoration efforts.

Agricultural groups, and many farmers and ranchers, also strongly opposed restoration.

"We cannot afford the damage or disease that can come from elk," said Emily Edmondson of Dickenson County.

DGIF board member Charles Yates proposed the alternative plan to stock the elk only in Buchanan County, where community support is high.

His proposal included provisions that managed elk hunting would begin in Buchanan County within four years of stocking and that at least 20 percent of awarded tags would be reserved for residents of the county.