BILLINGS – Although wildlife aggregation is known to spread deadly chronic wasting disease (CWD) and brucellosis, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department is highlighting the new elk feedground management plan as a path forward without abandonment the training.
The agency unveiled its strategy following four years of work that included statewide public meetings. Twenty-one winter elk feeding operations are managed by the department in western Wyoming.
The state began the program in the winter of 1909-1910 to ensure that prized large animals would not starve as their traditional wintering grounds were divided and migration routes blocked by development such as roads and fence
In 2020, the cost of the feeding program was $2.7 million, most of which was spent on hay. Two full-time employees administer the program with 16 private contractors hired annually.
Pain concerns
Chronic wasting disease is a chronically fatal disease that has steadily marched across Wyoming and neighboring states, including Montana. According to the US Geological Survey, CWD is found in free-ranging wildlife in 32 states and four Canadian provinces. That’s up from detections in just 21 states four years ago.
CWD is spread by infected cervids (members of the deer family, including moose) through bodily fluids. Unlike other diseases caused by viruses or bacteria, however, CWD is triggered by misfolded proteins called prions. Prions are difficult to kill, seem to persist in some soils for years and can spread through plants.
For years, conservation groups and even Montana’s Fish and Wildlife Commission have urged Wyoming to abandon the practice of wildlife feeding, as Wyoming’s wildlife is known to migrate to surrounding states. However, the practice is repeatedly cited as a way to prevent elk from potentially infecting cattle with brucellosis and competing with livestock for grass. Some outfitters and hunters are also concerned about a sharp decline in the elk population if the feedgrounds are abandoned.
“While CWD is an important factor in the management of feedgrounds, the ultimate goal of the collaborative feedgrounds process is to consider all biological, social, economic, and political issues, along with wildlife diseases , to achieve a robust long-term feedgrounds management plan informed by a public process for Department-operated feedgrounds.” Wyoming Game and Fish explained in its plan.
But the agency also noted in the plan that, “Given the Department’s responsibility to manage for healthy and sustainable cervid (deer, elk, and moose) populations over the long term, CWD cannot be ignored.”
Setting up guidelines
The department’s response to conflicting social issues is to create “sideboards” meant to “provide reassurances to the public and affected stakeholders.”
Sideboards include: elk herd population analyses; prioritizing hunting as the primary tool to manage elk populations; minimizing elk damage to private property and disease transmission to livestock; avoiding negative economic impacts on livestock producers; and minimizing elk competition with other wintering wildlife.
To ensure compliance with these sideboards, Wyoming Game and Fish will develop “feedground management action plans” for each elk herd unit.
“There hasn’t been a unified goal for feedground management in the past,” said Brad Hovinga, regional wildlife supervisor for the Jackson Region of Game and Fish, in an email.
Individual feedground plans, along with the state plan, will provide “consistent direction to all Department employees in their roles and responsibilities,” Hovinga added.
However, the agency also acknowledged that “the status quo may be the only option for some feedgrounds unless conditions change in the future.”
Tactics to prevent disease
To reduce the chances of the disease spreading to feedgrounds, the department can reduce the elk population through hunting.
In some areas, this may mean a reduction to the point where the herd can survive without feedground. Another tactic is to spread feed to disperse animals, or move feeding areas. The duration of the feeding period can also be cut.
Improving habitat to improve native food is another tactic being considered.
“To manage disease issues in western Wyoming elk, new and innovative pathways need to be explored to allow elk to winter away from feedgrounds where opportunities permit while continuing to reduce conflict in operations. of animals and limiting competition with other wintering wildlife,” the WGFD plan said. .
“In the case of Teton and northern Lincoln counties, this will require looking outside traditional agricultural use properties.”
Jim Magagna, executive vice-president of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, said his group recognizes the many challenges Wyoming Game and Fish faces in dealing with elk feedgrounds, disease transmission and large elk populations.
“If we are going to eliminate feedgrounds, then, we believe, G&F should review the need to significantly reduce these elk populations,” he wrote in an email. “We are also concerned with the consideration of taking more winter grazing on private lands in lieu of elk feeding. If this is done, it is critical that it be done in a way that does not in any way reduce available capacity. of grazing for the animals.”
Montana elk hunter and Sierra Club Northern Rockies field organizer Nick Gevock said the WGFD plan continues to contradict itself, acknowledging the disease problem while also calling for the status quo to be maintained.
“This is bad wildlife policy,” he said. “We’re talking about wildlife management through science, and the science is very clear.”
Wrapping it up
At the end of its 96-page feedground plan, WGFD said, it’s clear some changes are needed. Negotiating those changes, however, will be difficult.
“It’s easy to see what we have in common; an inherent and serious obligation to ensure that healthy, sustainable wildlife populations endure,” the agency wrote. “However, it is difficult to agree on how to accomplish that enormous task.”
The conclusion also states, “Controlling elk distributions in western Wyoming through supplemental feeding is not sustainable.” Therefore, the department is committed to incremental change over the long term.
The plan also concludes with a large list of research priorities, including topics such as “environmental methods of prion deactivation” and a “pilot project for feedground phase-out” at the North Pine and Alkali feedgrounds.
