Elk now live almost solely in the Rocky Mountains, which would make it

Hi there,

This is the sentence with the correct answer choice B:

The fact that elk now live almost solely in the Rocky Mountains would make it seem that they are mountain dwellers, but they once ranged over virtually all of the continental United States except for a small strip in the extreme Southwest.

In this sentence, “it” is not functioning as a proper pronoun. It is rather working as what is called “a placeholder”. For example:

It is very windy today.

In this sentence, “it” is just functioning as a placeholder and thus does not have a definite antecedent. This is the case with the sentence in question as well.

Now, pronoun “they” is referring to “Elk” only. In three out of two choices, “Elk” has been mentioned as plural. This is not uncommon because there are many animals whose plural form does not take “s” at the end. For example: sheep, fish, deer, etc. Also note that the animals belonging to the deer family have the same singular and plural forms. “Elk” happens to be one of them. If you do not know what an “elk” is, read the answer choices. If any of the answer choices has a singular verb to with “Elk” then we may need to see if this entity is singular or plural.
However, in this sentence, it is clear that “elk” has been used as plural entity.

Hope this helps.
Thanks.
Shraddha