Report says Jackson Hole elk herd needs continued feeding

[Ithaca 37]

LANDER, Wyo. — Jackson Hole's elk population would drop off by 7,000 if wildlife officials stopped giving them supplemental feed, a new report says.

"These elk (if not fed) will disperse to private lands ... and because there is no other way to control those elk, they will be killed because of the brucellosis risk or to prevent damage to private lands," Garvice Roby told a governor's brucellosis task force during a meeting Friday.

The Jackson Elk Herd Unit averages from 15,000 to 17,000 animals. About 6,000 elk in the herd spent parts of last winter on National Elk Refuge feedgrounds north of Jackson.

"Significant curtailing or eliminating elk feeding in the unit would likely precipitate a substantial die-off of wintering elk, or require the Game and Fish to cull the herd," he said. "And elk trend data clearly shows that habitat improvement projects will not maintain (current) elk numbers," said Roby, a retired Wyoming Game and Fish Department wildlife biologist.

Roby presented his report, titled the "Ramifications of Reduction or Elimination of Feeding on the Elk of Jackson Hole," which was commissioned by the Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife of Wyoming.

The report speculated what might happen if feeding was terminated or reduced on the National Elk Refuge and on three agency feedgrounds in the Gros Ventre River drainage. The report focused on the department's Elk Hunt Area 80.

The report concluded, among other things, that a significant reduction or the elimination of feeding would lead to large-scale brucellosis transmission to livestock because elk would scatter throughout private property and ranches in the area.

Many elk and bison in the greater Yellowstone area are infected with the disease brucellosis, which can be transmitted to cattle and cause cows to abort their first calves.

But several task force members disputed Roby's assertion that transmission of the disease would increase with the closing of feedgrounds.

"That point troubles me," said group member Kenneth Mills of the Wyoming State Veterinary Laboratory. "It goes against what we know ... that there's absolutely no question it would slow (transmission) of the disease down. When you concentrate elk (on feedgrounds) ... it will eventually infect them all."

The Game and Fish operates 22 feedgrounds in western Wyoming. The department also assists in the operation of the federally run National Elk Refuge.

 

[Wapiti Slayer]

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.

 

[Oak]

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?

Good question.

Oak

 

[Wapiti Slayer]

Jackson bison proliferate

By JEFF GEARINO
Southwest Wyoming bureau Tuesday, August 31, 2004




LANDER -- Buffalo populations in the Jackson bison herd will continue to climb until hunting is resumed on the National Elk Refuge north of Jackson, state wildlife officials predict.

Controlling the Jackson bison herd's size should be a key part of a new bison and elk management plan for the Jackson area, officials said. It should also be part of the recommendations a governor's committee will make on solving Wyoming's brucellosis problem.

The Jackson bison herd now numbers almost 800 animals, twice the herd objective of between 350 and 400 animals, Wyoming Game and Fish Department officials told the brucellosis task force last week.

Without effective population controls, the herd is expected to double in size again in about three years, according to agency estimates.

"By 2007-08 ... there will be around 1,500 bison if we don't have the means to remove at least the (bison) cows out of this population," Game and Fish Jackson/Pinedale regional wildlife supervisor Scott Smith warned.

In order for the elk population in the Jackson Hole area to remain at its high numbers of around 13,000 animals, winter feeding is a necessity. There are currently between 6,500 and 7,000 elk that winter in the elk refuge.

But many bison from the Jackson herd also feed on the refuge each year, which increases the brucellosis transmission risk between species.

Elk and bison in the larger Yellowstone Park area in western Wyoming harbor the last known reservoir of the disease. The brucellosis debate in recent months has focused on the elk feedgrounds like the refuge, which cause elk and bison to cluster in unnatural crowded herds and allows the disease to spread more rapidly.

Brucellosis is suspected of being transmitted by bison and elk to cattle through the ingestion of birth fluids. The disease can cause cows to abort their calves and in rare cases cause undulant fever in humans.

Gov. Dave Freudenthal appointed the 19-member brucellosis task force in February. The group was charged with formulating short and long-term recommendations to solving Wyoming brucellosis problem.

The state lost its federal brucellosis-free status earlier this year following outbreaks of the disease in Sublette and Washakie counties. Since then, there have been other cases of brucellosis found in cattle in Teton and Campbell counties.

Game and Fish Director Terry Cleveland told the group the state is currently precluded from hunting bison on the National Elk Refuge until a court-ordered management plan for elk and bison on the refuge and in Grand Teton National Park is completed.

The plan is being drafted by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Park Service.

"We want to be allowed to hunt on the refuge (in the plan)," Cleveland said. "Without that ability, it's very, very difficult to control that bison population."

The new management plan is a result of a lawsuit filed in 1998 by the Fund for Animals. The lawsuit delayed a planned Game and Fish-sponsored bison hunt on the elk refuge that aimed to reduce the risk of brucellosis being transmitted to cattle grazing in the region.

A federal judge later set aside the hunt -- which the Fund for Animals contended was illegal because the management agencies created an artificially high population of bison on the refuge with an elk feeding program and then failed to consider other alternatives to killing bison -- until the new plan is completed.

Smith said there has continued to be some recreational hunting of bison each year in Bridger-Teton National Forest areas around the refuge and on the North Fork of the Shoshone River near Cody.

But the harvest is small and does little to help knock down overall bison numbers, he said.

Last year, for example, bull hunters only harvested 27 bison and cow hunters 13 bison during the 2003 season, which ran from September to November.

Bison hunts in Wyoming are based on a random draw and there's great interest in the "once-in-a-lifetime" hunt, he said.

Hunters are put on an eligibility list, which is maintained year-round, according to state regulations. Smith said currently there are about 3,000 hunters just on the bull bison list.

"We do have the structure in place to manage bison through recreational hunting ... we're not controlling the bison population, but we still are offering a unique hunting opportunity," said Smith.

History of Jackson Hole bison

1840 -- Bison are exterminated from Jackson Hole and northwestern Wyoming through overhunting.

1948 -- 20 bison are reintroduced into the Jackson area from the Yellowstone National Park herd. The bison are kept in a fenced enclosure and fed hay each winter.

1963 -- Brucellosis is discovered in the herd. The herd is killed, initially leaving only four calves.

1964 -- Twelve more bison are transplanted from the Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota.

1968 -- The Jackson bison herd is declared brucellosis-free.

1969 -- Approximately 16 bison escape from the enclosure. It is decided to let the bison roam free, which is the beginning of the herd as it is known today.

1975-1980 -- Bison slowly move down to the National Elk Refuge. Bison begin regularly showing up on elk feed lines.

1996 -- State and federal agencies approve a long-term management plan for the herd that would cap the herd at between 350 and 400 animals. The plan also allows bison to continue to spend the winter on the refuge.

1996 -- The Fund for Animals files suit over the management plan and a scheduled bison hunt. The plan is eventually withdrawn as part of a court order and settlement agreement. Bison hunting is suspended on the refuge until an environmental impact statement on feeding at the refuge can be completed.

2000 -- Game and Fish Department officials count 489 bison in the herd.

2004 -- The herd population jumps to just under 800 animals.

2005 -- Jackson bison/elk EIS is expected to be released for public review in the spring.

Source: Wyoming Game and Fish Department

Southwest Wyoming Bureau reporter Jeff Gearino can be reached at (307) 875-5359 or at

 

[Elkhunter]

The man who has been Jackson's Game and Fish Biologist for the past 20 years recently presentes a report to the Wyoming Governor's Brucellousis Task Force. In his extensive report, Garvice Roby outlined the consequences of significantly cutting back or ending elk winter feeding. He says that if feeding is reduced or discontinued, about a 57% die-off of the current herd can be expected, along with drastic declines in bighorn sheep and moose populations. A summary of the Roby Report is printed below.
The Roby Report, Ramifications of Reduction or Elimination of Feeding on the Elk of Jackson Hole, paints a historical picture of the elk of Jackson Hole and discusses the realities of reducing or eliminating feeding in the Jackson Elk Herd Unit. No models with theoretical assumptions, but reality from a field biologist who spent 20 years overseeing the Jackson herd.

This report focuses on what state and federal wildlife agencies call the Jackson Elk Herd Unit. This unit consists of all elk herds in the northern part of Jackson Hole – all of the Valley’s land area north of the Town of Jackson , including the National Elk Refuge. The area south of the Town of Jackson encompasses the Fall Creek Elk Herd Unit. While the southern Unit is not considered in the Roby Report, logic suggests the biological conclusions may be even more applicable to the southern part of Jackson Valley for there is far less elk winter range remaining in the south than in the north. That is, there is no 24 thousand acre National Elk Refuge in the southern half of Jackson Hole .

Wildlife biologists face an inescapable fact: When attempting to predict what will occur in the future with wildlife populations there is no scientific certainty because there is no way to model or predict based on laboratory experiments with free ranging wildlife. Past history must be relied upon and utilized to predict the future. With 37 years of ecological experience and research in wildlife management, 20 of those years intimately connected with the pulse of the Jackson elk herd, Garvice Roby has authored a report that is sound scientifically and grounded in practical history.

Recently, statements have been made and questions asked as to whether Jackson Hole is and was historical elk winter range. This is not a new issue. Since settlement of Jackson in 1884 until the present, numerous elk have wintered in the Valley, yet less than one third of the original winter range remains today. What was once winter range will never be winter range again, because of the development of the town and the associated subdivisions. Since the winter of 1911, when some 2500 elk died because of deep snow and want of winter forage, what was ancestral winter range has only continued to decrease. The die off of 1911 precipitated elk feeding in Jackson Hole . How could 2500 wintering elk die off, if large numbers of elk didn’t winter in Jackson Hole ? History clearly demonstrates that large numbers of elk will die as a result of significant reduction or the elimination of feeding in the Jackson Elk Herd Unit, probably in numbers and in percentage greater than the die offs in the winter of 1911.

The theory which would see feeding terminated or greatly curtailed is premised on the assumption that elk will return to native winter ranges of 100 years ago. We know that the limited, available range has been drastically reduced. Also, because of the onset of other factors, i.e. the introduction of wolves whose presence concentrates wintering elk into large herds for protection from predation, the remaining ranges may never be fully utilized. Data summarized in this report relates the failures of habitat improvements to hold increased numbers of winter elk long term, notably in the Spread Creek drainages. With great fanfare agencies have closed allotments and removed livestock grazing only to find declining trends in elk utilization. These same improvements are now being touted as the panacea for the elimination of elk feed grounds.

This report summarizes, from a field biologist’s perspective, the history and problems associated with decreasing and or eliminating elk feeding. Through real scenarios and real experience, Garvice Roby provides a raw and contrasting picture to the views of those who proffer that the closing of feed grounds will have little impact on this Valley’s elk.

The report concludes that a significant reduction or the elimination of feeding would lead to:



1) In severe winters, Gros Ventre elk will migrate down to lower elevations on or near the National Elk Refuge. This “down drainage drift” will cause intense competition for extremely limited winter forage with elk, moose, and bighorn sheep which already winter there.

2) Winter distribution of elk on native winter ranges in the Gros Ventre Drainage and in Jackson Hole is generally a result of snow cover, depth, wind blown areas, icing and crusting. Icing and crusting snow conditions are more important than snow depths in effectively locking up available forage and concentrating elk at lower elevations.

3) Following wolf re-introduction more elk moved to feed grounds and elk numbers on native winter ranges declined through 2003 as a result of wolf/elk interactions.

4) Many elk winter ranges are also crucial ranges for other species such as moose and bighorn sheep. Competition for available forage has been a concern of area wildlife managers, and the reduction or elimination of feeding would drastically increase competition and stress between species adding to further declines in populations of moose and bighorn sheep. Four critical bighorn sheep winter ranges currently lay within what is defined as elk winter range areas. Moreover, bison consume three times as much forage as an elk -- every bison on the winter range means three less elk, further reducing elk numbers

5) There is no surplus winter forage in Jackson Hole and all available winter range is currently occupied by different ungulates species. Recent bighorn sheep die offs and the decline in the Valley’s moose herds are likely related to winter competition for available forage between elk and these species.

6) The economic and political significance of brucellosis can not be over looked. Approximately, 28 percent of all the area’s elk and 36-72 percent of the bison are infected. Terminating or scaling back feeding will cause elk and bison to seek forage on private lands. The same lands currently used to winter domestic livestock. Large scale brucellosis transmission to livestock will be inevitable. The Wyoming Game and Fish will then be forced to kill large numbers of wintering elk to prevent commingling.

7) Potential disease events with such diseases as chronic wasting disease and tuberculosis are real and the concern is valid; however, ceasing feeding to reduce animal densities and therefore reduce disease events is a fallacy. Elk and bison are herding animals and both diseases occur in unfed populations in eastern Wyoming and Colorado .

8) Finally, significant reduction or elimination of feeding will result in less than 3000-4000 elk on the National Elk Refuge and 5800 total elk surviving a deep snow winter – a minimum 57 percent reduction in current elk numbers.

In summary, significant curtailing or eliminating elk feeding in the Jackson Elk Herd Unit will likely precipitate a substantial die off of wintering elk, or require the Wyoming Game and Fish to cull (kill) large numbers of elk. Also, brucellosis transmission from elk and bison to cattle will explode, again requiring the Game and Fish to kill numerous elk and bison which are commingling with live stock. There is no excess winter range in Jackson Hole -- development has forever removed over two thirds of the Valley’s traditional winter range. Forcing elk and bison on to winter range that is being utilized by moose, bighorn sheep, and other species, will only lead to further declines in these ungulate populations. Elk trend data clearly shows that habitat improvement projects will not maintain elk numbers. Therefore, significantly reducing or eliminating elk winter feeding will ultimately lead to at least 57 percent reduction in the elk numbers and further increase drastic declines in moose, and bighorn sheep populations.

Garvice Roby spent 20 years working with and analyzing the elk of Jackson Hole . No one has more biological experience with the Valley’s elk population. After concentrated scrutiny of reducing or eliminating elk winter feeding, Mr. Roby arrived at the above conclusions. Those who love Jackson Hole ’s elk, moose, bighorn sheep, and other wildlife, would be wise to study and heed his counsel.