Is that true? Correct me if I’m wrong, but Elites don’t actually change a monster’s CR, they just make it count as double when calculating an encounter’s approximate difficulty. Making Elite forms of Beasts that aren’t already CR 4 or higher doesn’t actually fit the issue.
Creating “dire” Beasts (or whatever other term you want to add to the beginning of a beast’s name) is intended to create larger and stronger creatures with higher CRs. That’s, strictly speaking, different from how Elites work since Elites are intended to keep to-hit and Save values the same for monsters of a specific CR while still creating a “boss” version of that monster, thus leaving the CR unchanged (especially for the Druid who doesn’t inherit the often-inflated HP values of Elites).