Where Xutos goes all elk, all the time

Jones Has Two Weeks to Get Wildlife Off Blackfoot Ranch

By Nathaniel Hoffman, 3-29-07

	The "high fence" surrounding the Blackfoot Mountain Ranch is covered in snow drifts, allowing for ingress and egress of either wild animals or the domestic cervidae left on the ranch. Apparently the animals that are trapped on the ranch have not found this particular snow bridge. Photo courtesy of IDFG.

Ag issues fines to Jones, five other elk ranchers

East Idaho elk rancher Rulon Jones has two weeks to haze, bait or trap wild deer, elk and moose off of his Blackfoot Mountain elk ranch, a spokesman for the governor’s office said Tuesday.

“Rulon’s going to receive a joint letter from Fish and Game and the Department of Agriculture outlining acceptable actions over the next two weeks,” said David Hensley, attorney for Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter.

If he cannot remove the animals from the ranch within the two weeks, Jones will get kill permits from the Idaho Department of Fish and Game (IDFG) to shoot the animals at his own expense, Otter spokesman Mark Warbis said.

Meanwhile, Jones has also received a $2,500 Notice of Violation from the Idaho State Department of Agriculture (ISDA) for illegally dumping about 10 bull elk carcasses outside his ranch last fall. On March 16, ISDA issued six citations against domestic cervidae operators for dumping carcasses, illegal transfer of domestic elk and failure to submit an annual inventory, according to records obtained by WIN.

Warbis said the governor was not aware of the fines and that the alleged violations do not change the need to deal with the wild big game on the ranch.
Messages left by Wild Idaho News on Jones’s cell phone were not returned.

The animals, about 20 deer, four moose and a dozen elk, have likely been trapped behind Jones’s high fence since he opened the ranch last fall. IDFG has consistently opposed the opening of high-fence game farms when there is public wildlife trapped behind the fences. IDFG policy requires that wildlife that comes into contact with domestic elk not be returned to the wild because of the risks of disease transmission and interbreeding.

On at least five occasions, the ISDA, which regulates game farms in Idaho, has allowed operators to populate their ranches with domestic cervidae despite IDFG concerns about wildlife being trapped.

IDFG’s practice of isolating or killing wild animals that come into contact with captive elk is in line with most state wildlife departments, said Bryan Richards, CWD project leader for the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisc., a federal wildlife research center under the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

“Once it’s outside the fence the potential for control drops dramatically,” Richards said. “Even though the risk may be very, very small, the consequences of being wrong can be very, very large.”

Utah’s Division of Wildlife Resources has a similar policy to IDFG, but has occasionally allowed wild game animals that come into contact with domesticated game to be returned to the wild, said big game coordinator Anis Aoude.

Wild game trapped on game farms is common in Utah as well, he said, but is not the biggest issue for wildlife.

“It’s not rare but it’s not a big issue either. I think a bigger issue is the land that those properties are taking away from wildlife habitat,” Aoude said.
During the winters of 2004 and 2005, Utah authorities flew over Jones’s Ogeden Valley ranch and shot the trapped wildlife.

IDFG spent one day earlier this month trying to shoot the game on Jones’s Idaho ranch, but Otter ordered the agency to stand down and not kill the public animals. He asked the department to consider non-lethal options.

After State veterinarian Greg Ledbetter assured IDFG and the governor in a March 20 letter that the risk of disease in wild cervids on the ranch was minimal, IDFG, ISDA and Jones met with the governor’s office to set the timeframe for removal of the animals.

Ledbetter reviewed health records from 20 of Jones’s elk and found no evidence of tuberculosis, brucellosis, chronic wasting disease, meningeal worm or muscle worm, according to the letter.

Ledbetter stopped short of “certifying” the herd as disease free and did not look into giant liver flukes, Johnne’s disease, or “other diseases or parasites determined to pose a risk to other domestic cervidae, livestock, or wildlife” as the IDFG requested.

In addition, four domestic elk that remain on the ranch, and one that died of unknown causes, have not been individually tested for CWD or other diseases.

Winter conditions persist at the Blackfoot Mountain Ranch outside Blackfoot, and removal operations prior to the governor’s order were thwarted by snow and mountainous terrain on the ranch.

IDFG Director Cal Groen said Wednesday that ISDA officials were working on the letter to Jones. John Chatburn, ISDA’s deputy administrator of animal industries, the division that oversees game farms, said he was not aware of the timeframe being put on Jones. He said the letter would include direction for Jones should his attempts to remove the wildlife alive fail.

“It will probably include, if the non-lethal removal isn’t successful, lethal removal,” Chatburn said.

The state is also asking Jones to shoot one of the wild cervids on his ranch to be tested for disease, and he may receive some extra time to carry out that part of the deal, Warbis said.

As to the fine, Jones has two weeks to request a hearing or a settlement meeting with ISDA.

Like this story? Get more! Sign up for our free newsletters.