Herd Horrors
Wyoming’s National Elk Refuge on Ten Most Imperiled List
Feeding programs, overpopulation and disease are creating a "wildlife time bomb" at the elk refuge, a new report says.
By Amy Linn, 6-22-09
A grim future is predicted for the 25,000-acre National Elk Refuge in Wyoming unless the sprawling home to elk and bison gets an infusion of new policies and resources, according to a new report from the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The group ranks the wildlife sanctuary—which has one of the largest concentrations of elk in the world—as one of America’s Ten Most Imperiled Refuges.
The refuge was established in 1912 in the wilderness south of Grand Teton and Yellowstone national parks in an effort to resuscitate elk herds, which had faced mass starvation after bitterly cold winters and human encroachment, PEER notes. The results have not been good.
An artificial feeding program began, causing a population explosion; the overcrowded elk decimated plants that provide natural forage; and the animals are at risk for devastating diseases, creating a “time bomb” in the making, the PEER report says.
Here are some highlights straight from the group’s announcement:
-- Chronic wasting disease (CWD), a relative of mad cow disease, has been discovered within 45 miles of the refuge. Like mad cow, CWD is believed to be caused by prions, highly infectious agents (shed by feces and urine) that can live in soil for decades. “Further spread into the already stressed, dense herds will, in all probability, produce a cataclysmic wildlife disaster.”
-- Overcrowding at the refuge allows elk herds to become “a reservoir of brucellosis.”
-- The refuge has only seven employees, leaving it with “no resources to undertake urgently needed management, research, and education tasks.”
-- Thanks to the feeding program, the wintering population of elk climbed to 7,500; the wintering numbers of bison rose from 13 animals in 1980 to more than 2,500.
To keep the area from becoming a CWD “death zone,” PEER recommends immediate action such as elk and bison herd reductions and the creation of a multi-agency task force to create a workable master plan.
Gee,I had heard that elk were just about extinct in the Greater Gros Ventre sub region after all those "damn killing machines" with fur and fangs were released there bout those parts,a decade ago.
Really though should we be surprised by any of this considering all the Winter range mansion mow-overs that have squeezed them into what amounts to a giant Mcdonalds parking lot of wildlife food addiction and migration altered unnatural conscentration that generally fosters weakness and laziness(actually sounds like the current status of a lot of American culture)combined with about 17 of the past 20 years being exceptionally mild with littl or no winter kill and no J-Hole tourists wanting to watch wolves get the snow all blood spattered-Yea big mystery there.
No resources available--it's all in iraq iran afghanistan korea germany japan..blah blah blah..SICK AMERIKA..
Comment By Johnny Reb, 6-23-09Yep, 19,000 elk devastated millions of acres of habitat since the late 1800s.. Just more Iron Mountain Report nonsense propaganda covering for the ESA disaster as usual. Funny how the government feeding program feeds could never be contaminated with feces and urine, must be the elk defecating in their own food supply, only took 10 million years to catch up with modern "science." And of course the wolves are innocent...They only take the weak (calves) and the Sick. (Mature Bulls). With the cows that finally collapse from exhaustion from being chased 24-7...Sheeesh, and to think this is where millions of Buffalo once roamed..Its just amazing there is a habitat left at all after that environmental hazard of the earlier centuries...
Comment By Don, 6-23-09Looks to me like the article was written by a REALTOR! Not much mention of the good things that happen because of the refuge.
Whow it will make one heck of a sub-division! Just what Jackson needs another housing development! You can bet the plans are stuffed in some desk waiting to emerge.
Pretty simple solution. Just phase out feeding and step up hunting. Quit treating wildlife like cows. Of course the city of Jackson would have to deal with seeing elk die. Instead the refuge is installing irrigation to try and increase the forage base. It's kind of funny how most of the major ungulate wildlife management issues are how to kill them without offending people's sensibilities.
Comment By Mickey Garcia, 6-23-09Repent! The End is Near! You have sinned mightily!
Comment By Johnny Reb, 6-23-09LMAO
By Mickey Garcia, 6-23-09
Repent! The End is Near! You have sinned mightily!
Removal of meat and bone meal from any feed, supplements, blocks, etc. given to wild animals would be a first step.
Comment By Jack Wallingford, 6-23-09You mean we haven't killed off those bison yet. We exterminated them in the 1800's why haven't we succeeded yet. why are we failing at killing off the world's great beauty and gifts to us? where oh where are we going wrong. I got a great idea, why not get another republican in the white house again. the agenda is not finished yet. Jack
Comment By Treehuggin' Cowgirl, 6-24-09I was referring to elk and deer, not bison. Bison's population and range have been reduced so drastically they're a different deal. Ungulates tend to be more tolerant of living in and around people than their predators. This has led to elk and other ungulates moving into more populated areas in order to avoid predation. The town of Banff has designed fences to keep elk in areas where more wolves can eat them. Rocky Mountain National Park is sending snipers in with silencers in February. The Elk Refuge is doing primitive weapons hunts in the South Unit right by the highway and a nursing home. In most places in the Rocky Mountains, elk are over the wildlife agencies target objectives and their historical densities.
I'd rather see wildlife treated as though it were wild. Resources should be invested in protecting linkage corridors and buying up grazing allotments on nearby private and public lands instead of irrigating and buying pellets.
And actually, in Jackson it's the environmentalists (Greater Yellowstone Coalition in particular) who are pushing for the Refuge to quit feeding. Sportsmen for Wildlife (your standard predator hating, good ol' boy, hunting club) keeps trying to deliver hay to the refuge every year, because they don't want to see a drastic reduction in the elk populations.
Comment By Sam Hutching, 6-24-09Get a grip folks. I live in Jackson Hole and this story is so full of bull that it's up to my knees. I have lived here for 12 years and the "feeding" time for these animals on the refuge has gone from 4 months of the year to under 2 months. There is so much graze out there that the animals take care of their own feeding. By the way, understand that taking tourists out to see the elk while they are "fed" is a huge business here.
Even the ranchers are fighting this idea of shutting the refuge down. Each fall they stage a protest in town, driving thru here with trucks loaded with hay for the refuge and for the elk. They know quite well that, if the refuge is shut down, the elk will have to rely on the grazing that they use for their cattle and they don't want that!! Remember, the ranchers in this valley were the ones who put this program together to help the elk during the winter when THEY pushed them off the traditional winter feed grounds.
Also, contrary to the nonsense being spouted about the refuge, the herds "DO NOT" all hang out together. The area in the refuge is huge and the elk spread themselves out all over the place. They do not hang out in one huge group.
As to the disease problems within the herds, everyone needs to remember that many of the diseases being spread around, even in the wild ungulates, has been brought to our shores from other countries through their livestock.
Remember, the elk have been using the refuge since 1912, it is now locked into their genes and collective memory. Their natural migratory routes have been cut by ranching, and human use and if they do manage to shut this refuge down, it will be a fiasco.
As to the idea of hunting. We have an extended elk hunt around here which even reaches into the Grand Teton National Park. But shooting elk to control their numbers is a lot different than shooting an animal because it's starving to death. Think about that.
There's a difference between shutting down and the refuge and phasing out wildlife feeding. The refuge has made as much progress in the last couple of years as the Bush administration has let them, but all the feedlots operated by Wyoming Game and Fish aren't helping much.
Many organizations including the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, Defenders of Wildlife, the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance and the Greater Yellowstone Coalition are working to buy out grazing allotments (recently in the Gros Ventre), secure conservation easements, purchase some keys parcels and enhance the available habitats. This is all good work, but it only mitigates the problem. It doesn't solve it. There are more elk in Jackson than the habitat can support.
As for diseases, if you're entirely focused on wildlife, brucellosis isn't a big deal. It's a pain in the butt for ranchers, but it has little impact on wildlife populations. However, Chronic Wasting Disease has been found within 100 miles of the refuge. CWD is basically mad cow for deer and elk. There is no treatment. Live tests for the disease in elk are still being tested in Rocky Mountain National Park, and post-mortem tests are still not considered 100% accurate. Like all contagious diseases, increased wildlife density contributes to it. People can likely be infected with CWD by eating an infected animal as they can with mad cow. If a person gets CWD, their brain and spinal column will gradually turn to mush, and they will die. If you want to kill the Jackson Hole economy get that in there and see what happens to outfitters and the hunting culture.
Wild animals often die unpleasant deaths. I'd rather see a healthy wildlife population than every individual animal pampered and protected.
Brucellosis is a big deal for ranchers and testing the bison and ridding the area of the disease should be done to get the area clean. The key point on feeding as with your own nutrition is providing the elk with the proper ingredients, get the meat and bone meal out!
Comment By Treehuggin' Cowgirl, 6-24-09Wildlife don't get CWD or brucellosis from contaminated human made foods. They get it from each other, in the case of CWD likely from eating near each other's corpses. Brucellosis is a big deal to ranchers, because the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has decided it poses a health risk to humans and imposes stricter rules on states where brucellosis is present. Whether or not that's still relevant in the days of modern antibiotics is a question I'm not going to tackle, but plenty of ranchers think brucellosis regulations are just the feds being a pain in the tuckus.
Comment By Ida Leika Vegetarian, 6-24-09Well ol' Sam, it's quite possible there's someone writin' here that's been around the Hole longer than any individual elk out there. Ye ol' Refuge has changed a lot during an elk or two's lifespan. It looks more like a golf course every day - all them sprinklers, telephone poles, power lines, phone boxes, metal sided reflective buildings, new roads, joggers w/ babystrollers, gunslingin' hospital trustees, new tourist-totin' concessionaires, billboards, water wells, fenced off Rafter-J type saplings, bluebirdhouses, tall fences, buffalo jumps, 3 to 4 lane highways, museums, motels, gas stations with 90,000 W lights all nite long, 21 yr old trustfunder fisherboys packin' PBR's along Flat Cr, yuppies lookin' fer a freshly paved bikepath, fish hatchery's new brick bldgs, hilltop subdivisions, cellphone towers, hidden surveilance cameras, and anti-terrorism SAMs.
Ya like Golf?
I have a question to ask the good citizens of Wyoming as well as scientists. When did they the Wyoming Weak subspecies of Wapiti develop? I mean it's fascinating. We have an entire subspecies strangely within an arbitrary state border that needs feed and protection provided by the human species.
Up here in Montana, it appears our elk are just ... elk and don't require such extraordinary human species interventions. Can any scientist shed light on this weak subspecies (Wyoming Wapiti) and why it requires such extraordinary coddling?