Remove trespassing elk from arid lands

Nine hundred elk live at least part of their annual life cycle on a research area supposedly restricted to the study of ecology of arid lands.
I ruminate over the plight of those trespassing elk. In the distant past elk roamed over much of the US as did Native Americans, which we had no trouble restricting from widespread areas. The American elk is a magnificent animal. A healthy adult male stands 5 feet high at the shoulders and weighs up to one thousand pounds. Obviously the metabolism of that roving mammal requires a proportionate amount of food. Care to estimate how much?
Their favored food does not exist in lush stands on the Arid Lands Ecology (ALE) Reserve. Grass abounds but the brush they favor in winter exists in a few canyons fed by springs. In search of food this herd travels for miles over sensitive desert surface trampling the soil. The five inch hooves and weight of the elk are about the same as cattle that have been refused grazing rights for over fifty years.
Seventeen thousand acres were set aside in the 1970s by congressional action for study of the ecology of arid lands. Although not pristine the shrub-steppe habitat was free from grazing for half a century. Now it is open to grazing. Is that wise? Research funding is limited. Are researchers' logic also limited? Obviously the outcome of the elk is not going to be decided by logic. Why has the long term vision for ALE changed in 35 years?
The elk have got to go.
Naomi Sherer