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Wildlife Welfare and the Fate of Elk in Greater Yellowstone
Tom Darin and Meredith Taylor
By now, we've all been told the basic problems and competing tensions with elk feedgrounds and the resulting disease issues. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD) have publicly acknowledged that we are sitting ducks for when, not if, chronic wasting disease (CWD) arrives in Jackson Hole and the surrounding Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The experts informed us at recent meetings, forums and hearings that CWD is lethal to elk. CWD, caused by a virtually indestructible protein called a prion, is now known to permanently contaminate the soil. Further, it is widely acknowledged that dense populations, including those on the National Elk Refuge and 22 feedgrounds operated by WGFD, spread disease rapidly and are the perfect host for disease transmission. In short: CWD is coming, there is no cure or vaccination and our feedgrounds set the stage for catastrophic losses for our magnificent elk herds.
So we ask the question - to our governor and state politicians, to WGFD, to USFWS, to the Forest Service, and to ourselves - what are we going to do about it? Do we dare allow this disease, which thrives in concentrated conditions such as feedgrounds, to spread throughout Wyoming's wildlife on our watch? How will we explain our inaction to future hunters, wildlife watchers and the millions of Americans who visit our beautiful state each year? Is this the legacy that we want to leave our children?
It was gratifying to hear during a recent feedground forum in Pinedale that WGFD will at least consider a program to relieve the concentrated elk feedground conditions. One possibility the agency mentioned is a pilot project to phase out three feedgrounds in the Gros Ventre range over several years - two of them within the Bridger-Teton National Forest. WGFD has identified these three feedgrounds as high priority for eventual elimination over time with careful planning, monitoring and oversight. More importantly, changes we make now can have an effect in preventing catastrophic elk losses to disease. CWD mortality is directly related to density. Studies show that free-ranging elk suffer about 4 to 5 percent loss from CWD, while those concentrated on feeding grounds or game farms may succumb to the disease at a rate of 60 to 75 percent. We have to ask then, why aren't we aggressively pursuing these habitat improvement ideas now before CWD arrives?
One may point to the governor's Brucellosis task force for solutions. Unfortunately, the initial meetings have focused on controlling that disease with more fencing and vaccination - measures that have proven ineffective against brucellosis. Indeed, the recent loss of Wyoming's brucellosis-free status with these measures in place amplifies what we already know-that these "solutions" have not helped control brucellosis, and they certainly will not help prevent CWD. There is no vaccination or cure for CWD and reinforcement of feedground boundaries may actually increase disease transmission due to concentration. The task force appears headed to the same conclusion we heard over a decade ago - that feeding increases disease transmission in wildlife. Tell us something we don't already know.
And nagging questions persist. Can we afford to wait another year? How many more millions of dollars will we spend feeding and vaccinating elk instead of improving habitat and purchasing conservation easements to maintain winter forage and migration routes? Do we need yet another task force to pursue the same ineffective answers to the same questions, essentially rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic? The Greater Yellowstone Interagency Brucellosis Committee has been meeting for over 9 years and Wyoming just lost its brucellosis-free status after 12 clean years. Can we afford to bury an even more insidious disease (CWD) into that endless process?
We think not. It is interesting that Montana wildlife managers would face up to six months in jail for feeding wildlife according to their law prohibiting this as a criminal act. In Montana, wildlife feeding is illegal when it results in an "artificial concentration of game animals that may potentially contribute to the transmission of disease or that constitutes a threat to public safety." Sound familiar? It should, as this is precisely what Wyoming feedgrounds accomplish.
Last year the Teton County Commission prohibited feeding of wildlife as well. The time is now for our state wildlife agency to act decisively, and develop a pilot feedground phase-out program on the Gros Ventre. We imagine, and strongly support, that any phase-out would be complemented by habitat improvement projects such as those moving forward with the Jackson Interagency Habitat Initiative. A phase-out of feeding over several years would involve nearby ranchers and landowners, contain measures to keep elk off of these lands and perhaps even provide compensation for lost private land forage. We understand that in severe winters, emergency feeding may be required. A favorable end result over time is that elk should be managed at carrying capacity on the landscape that can sustain them naturally, without artificial feeding.
Yes, there will be some big pills to swallow while we transition from feeding elk to the eventual dispersal of healthy, free-ranging wildlife along the ancient migration routes and native range. We will all have to learn to live with those. But what we cannot live with is knowing of a future threat, knowing the current problem, knowing the direction for a workable solution . . . and then failing to address the one variable in our control: concentrated conditions. It is time for our great state to reconsider its failed policy of wildlife welfare. This is particularly true at a time when the fate of our elk herds hang in the balance with CWD looming on the horizon.
So we ask the governor, our elected officials, as well state and federal wildlife agencies - Are the potential impacts of Chronic Wasting Disease devastating feedground elk something you really want to happen on your watch?
Tom Darin is the Public Lands Director at the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance and Meredith Taylor is the Greater Yellowstone Program Director for the Wyoming Outdoor Council.
Tom Darin and Meredith Taylor
By now, we've all been told the basic problems and competing tensions with elk feedgrounds and the resulting disease issues. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD) have publicly acknowledged that we are sitting ducks for when, not if, chronic wasting disease (CWD) arrives in Jackson Hole and the surrounding Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. The experts informed us at recent meetings, forums and hearings that CWD is lethal to elk. CWD, caused by a virtually indestructible protein called a prion, is now known to permanently contaminate the soil. Further, it is widely acknowledged that dense populations, including those on the National Elk Refuge and 22 feedgrounds operated by WGFD, spread disease rapidly and are the perfect host for disease transmission. In short: CWD is coming, there is no cure or vaccination and our feedgrounds set the stage for catastrophic losses for our magnificent elk herds.
So we ask the question - to our governor and state politicians, to WGFD, to USFWS, to the Forest Service, and to ourselves - what are we going to do about it? Do we dare allow this disease, which thrives in concentrated conditions such as feedgrounds, to spread throughout Wyoming's wildlife on our watch? How will we explain our inaction to future hunters, wildlife watchers and the millions of Americans who visit our beautiful state each year? Is this the legacy that we want to leave our children?
It was gratifying to hear during a recent feedground forum in Pinedale that WGFD will at least consider a program to relieve the concentrated elk feedground conditions. One possibility the agency mentioned is a pilot project to phase out three feedgrounds in the Gros Ventre range over several years - two of them within the Bridger-Teton National Forest. WGFD has identified these three feedgrounds as high priority for eventual elimination over time with careful planning, monitoring and oversight. More importantly, changes we make now can have an effect in preventing catastrophic elk losses to disease. CWD mortality is directly related to density. Studies show that free-ranging elk suffer about 4 to 5 percent loss from CWD, while those concentrated on feeding grounds or game farms may succumb to the disease at a rate of 60 to 75 percent. We have to ask then, why aren't we aggressively pursuing these habitat improvement ideas now before CWD arrives?
One may point to the governor's Brucellosis task force for solutions. Unfortunately, the initial meetings have focused on controlling that disease with more fencing and vaccination - measures that have proven ineffective against brucellosis. Indeed, the recent loss of Wyoming's brucellosis-free status with these measures in place amplifies what we already know-that these "solutions" have not helped control brucellosis, and they certainly will not help prevent CWD. There is no vaccination or cure for CWD and reinforcement of feedground boundaries may actually increase disease transmission due to concentration. The task force appears headed to the same conclusion we heard over a decade ago - that feeding increases disease transmission in wildlife. Tell us something we don't already know.
And nagging questions persist. Can we afford to wait another year? How many more millions of dollars will we spend feeding and vaccinating elk instead of improving habitat and purchasing conservation easements to maintain winter forage and migration routes? Do we need yet another task force to pursue the same ineffective answers to the same questions, essentially rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic? The Greater Yellowstone Interagency Brucellosis Committee has been meeting for over 9 years and Wyoming just lost its brucellosis-free status after 12 clean years. Can we afford to bury an even more insidious disease (CWD) into that endless process?
We think not. It is interesting that Montana wildlife managers would face up to six months in jail for feeding wildlife according to their law prohibiting this as a criminal act. In Montana, wildlife feeding is illegal when it results in an "artificial concentration of game animals that may potentially contribute to the transmission of disease or that constitutes a threat to public safety." Sound familiar? It should, as this is precisely what Wyoming feedgrounds accomplish.
Last year the Teton County Commission prohibited feeding of wildlife as well. The time is now for our state wildlife agency to act decisively, and develop a pilot feedground phase-out program on the Gros Ventre. We imagine, and strongly support, that any phase-out would be complemented by habitat improvement projects such as those moving forward with the Jackson Interagency Habitat Initiative. A phase-out of feeding over several years would involve nearby ranchers and landowners, contain measures to keep elk off of these lands and perhaps even provide compensation for lost private land forage. We understand that in severe winters, emergency feeding may be required. A favorable end result over time is that elk should be managed at carrying capacity on the landscape that can sustain them naturally, without artificial feeding.
Yes, there will be some big pills to swallow while we transition from feeding elk to the eventual dispersal of healthy, free-ranging wildlife along the ancient migration routes and native range. We will all have to learn to live with those. But what we cannot live with is knowing of a future threat, knowing the current problem, knowing the direction for a workable solution . . . and then failing to address the one variable in our control: concentrated conditions. It is time for our great state to reconsider its failed policy of wildlife welfare. This is particularly true at a time when the fate of our elk herds hang in the balance with CWD looming on the horizon.
So we ask the governor, our elected officials, as well state and federal wildlife agencies - Are the potential impacts of Chronic Wasting Disease devastating feedground elk something you really want to happen on your watch?
Tom Darin is the Public Lands Director at the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance and Meredith Taylor is the Greater Yellowstone Program Director for the Wyoming Outdoor Council.
