WILD BILL
Wyoming Feedgrounds Double as CWD Time Bomb
By Bill Schneider, 11-03-05
Elk hunters in the Greater Yellowstone Area should start thinking like they’re living below a huge dam with cracks in it. They know what’s going to happen. It’s only a matter of time, and it’s guaranteed to be devastating.That dam is located in northwestern Wyoming, mostly in the Upper Green River Basin, but also around Jackson. It manifests itself in the form of twenty-two state-managed feedgrounds, where the State of Wyoming collectively feeds up to 20,000 elk during severe winters, and the famous National Elk Refuge managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
It’s a time-honored principle of wildlife management that when you feed wildlife, you pay a big price for it. For elk hunters—and everybody else who likes seeing elk—that bill will soon be due because Wyoming’s feedgrounds double as a Chronic Wasting Disease time bomb ready to explode.
“That’s true,� answers Robert Hoskins, president of the Dubois Wildlife Association and long-time opponent to the feedgrounds, when asked if he agrees. “It is a time bomb because the State of Wyoming refuses to consider any proposal to close the feedgrounds. We’re just waiting for CWD to hit. We’re doing everything we can to stop the feeding, but we are rebuffed every time. The livestock industry is in complete control of this whole thing.�
“It’s an eventuality,� agrees Tom Roffe, chief of wildlife health and veterinarian for the Fish and Wildlife Service in Bozeman. “It’s not a matter of if, but when.�
And when it happens, what will we do? The answer to that question should send a shiver up the spine of every elk hunter because the solution could be worse than the problem.
Wyoming has documented cases of CWD in both elk and mule deer dating back thirty years. The disease has been slowly moving northwest from the southeastern corner of the state. In recent years, there have been several documented CWD cases in the Thermopolis area, which is only about thirty air miles from the Upper Green River Basin, but still east of the Continental Divide. Roffe finishes the grim picture by pointing out that radio-collared elk have been documented traveling from the feedgrounds back and forth over the Divide. For elk hunters, this is like looking out your window and seeing water starting to leak through cracks in the dam.
In CWD outbreaks on game farms, the disease has killed up to 50 percent of the animals, but in wild populations, mortality is much lower. Roffe likens the feedgrounds to a situation somewhere between free-ranging elk and captive herds on game farms, so mortality will be high, but probably not 50 percent. “Nobody knows what it will be,� he says.
But even 50 percent mortality on the feedgrounds might seem like a minor problem compared to the solution to a CWD epidemic. Montana, for example, has formalized a CWD response plan that includes an option for killing all elk in the area around the outbreak. Wyoming has a plan, too, but it does not include the “depopulation� option. Not yet!
Wyoming’s plan is, according to both Roffe and Hoskins, basically waiting for the disease to hit the feedgrounds and then deal with it in three ways—reduce density, reduce feeding, and spread out the elk herd.
“Why would you not do that before it gets there,� Roffe asks. “Wyoming’s plan will be too little, too late.� He compares it to waiting for avian flu pandemic instead of trying to prevent it from happening.
Hoskins points out the absence of barriers for elk carrying CWD from moving from the feedgrounds to Idaho and Montana and infecting populations there. “It’s a slow process, but it will get to Montana and Idaho.�
“Prevention is the best action,� Roffe insists. “If we want to have a success, there has to be a prevention plan.�
The punch line is: Nobody has a good solution for dealing with an outbreak of CWD in our wild elk herds, and it’s almost guaranteed to happen in Wyoming. The best case scenario might be letting the disease run its course and lose a huge percentage of our elk populations. The worse case scenario might be trying to eradicate it. Wildlife officials are understandably skittish about saying this out loud, but any attempt to eradicate the disease would involve killing lots of elk. On the Wyoming feedgrounds, in fact, it could easily mean killing many thousands.
There are ways to minimize the risk in advance, and stopping the feeding tops the list. In reality, the feedgrounds are no different than game farms, which have been banned in Wyoming since the early 1970s. They concentrate wildlife and create circumstances favorable to spreading the disease. Hoskins, never lost for words or energy to stop the feeding, describes the feedgrounds as “petri dishes for spreading disease.�
Roffe agrees. “The feedgrounds are bringing elk into close proximity and enhancing the probability of spreading CWD.�
Let’s be clear on one key point. This is not a Wyoming problem. Instead, it’s a massive threat to elk populations throughout the Rocky Mountain West. We can only hope Wyoming sees the gravity of the situation and acts before it’s too late.
Wyoming has resisted placing feedgrounds east of the Continental Divide. Instead, the state has concentrated on protecting key winter range to keep the elk population high, a similar strategy used successfully in Montana. Now, Wyoming wildlife officials and conservation organizations need to grow the backbone necessary to take on the livestock lobby for the benefit of wildlife and hunters and close the feedgrounds west of the Divide.
[End of article]
Bill
You nailed it. Thanks.
Robert
All TSE prion diseases are deeply scary, because we know so little about this disease.
From a limited point of view, the Wyoming feed grounds are hugely successful -- they've kept elk numbers up, prevented starvation and kept conflicts with ranchers down. That being said, the scientific concensus is that high densities of wildlife populations create conditions for the rapid, even explosive transmission of disease. Scientists prudently recommend closure of the feed grounds. The big complexity is political and economic -- is there the will and the means to close the feed grounds while compensating ranchers for the resultant impact as elk eat forage or hay that had been intended for livestock?
There's certainly some money available in the state's $1.8 billion surplus. But Wyoming Game & Fish and the wildlife commission aren't sounding as if they're willing to take the pre-emptive step of closing the feedgrounds before CWD hits. That leaves the political will question up to the legislature and/or the governor. In this case, playing it safe politically may be setting the stage for an ecological tragedy of epic proportions. I hope I'm wrong.
From the standpoint of the public interest, I would disagree that ranchers have a right to be compensated for changes that closing feedgrounds would "impose" on them. Let's not forget that we have feedgrounds for one reason and one reason only: the livestock industry has forced the State of Wyoming to operate them to keep elk away from forage "reserved" for cattle. This protection of a private industry at public expense has caused an enormous problem for the public interest.
In 1994, it was calculated that feedgrounds had cost the Wyoming Game & Fish Department over $200 million since feeding began in the early 20th century. Since 1994, feedgrounds have cost the Department approximately $1.5 million a year. These costs represent a considerable subsidy to ranchers in the feedground areas that is entirely unwarranted. Ranchers don't put a dime into the cost of feedgrounds.
In other words, feeding elk to benefit ranchers has imposed considerable costs upon the public--in this case, Wyoming's hunters and anglers, since they have paid the brunt of the cost of feedgrounds. In addition, the feedgrounds have proven to be a huge disease hazard, even to the livestock industry as a brucellosis threat, and we have the livestock industry to thank for that too. In short, ranchers have created a situation that is now harmful to themselves, but they are so greedy for grass that they refuse to accept responsibility for their actions in keeping feedgrounds open.
One should instead be arguing that ranchers ought to be compensating the public for the incredible mess that feeding elk has caused and for the unprecedent ecological and economic costs that a CWD epidemic will impose on the public.
That being said, given the politics of the situation, it will probably be the case that ranchers will be paid out of public funds to "mitigate" the closure of feedgrounds, if that happens. One area where funds might be targeted to ranchers is to fence in ranch winter feedlines and haystacks to keep elk away from cattle and hay as elk adjust their migratory behavior.
However, the political will is currently lacking in Wyoming State Government to do anything that might "adversely" affect the livestock industry, and without intervention by other means, the feedgrounds will remain open and the ecological tragedy that we all fear will occur. When that happens, all the cards in the deck are wild because we do have so little understanding of how a CWD epidemic of the scale we are facing will work itself out.
why don't you address the feeding that the US Fish and Wildlife Service is doing on the National Elk Refuge? Certainly, yes, Wyoming is doing its darn big huge large share of the gambling here, but until the USFWS takes the first step, why would anyone accept halting the feeding on Wyoming's feedgrounds?
If the thinking is that those elk will just head off to the other feedgrounds, well, yes, that would be correct. But the political impact might do some good, no?
The short answer is that the National Elk Refuge is currently under a court order that mandated the recently released Environmental Impact Statement for Elk and Bison. That makes it difficult to actively work against feeding on the Refuge, until the court mandate is fulfilled.
That court order was the result of a lawsuit filed by the Fund For Animals against a planned hunt of bison. The FFA argued that the hunt, designed to reduce bison numbers on the Refuge, should be stopped until the FWS conduced an EIS on its elk feeding program, as it was the bison discovery of the elk feedlines over twenty years ago that boosted bison numbers in the first place.
The feeding program on the NER is a target of conservationists and also Refuge staff; however, folks should know that the NER has been actually managing its feeding program much better than the Wyoming G&F;Department is managing its feeding program. That's partly because the Refuge is much larger than any State feedground but also because FWS ecologists have always known the disease dangers of feeding and have done everything possible within the confines of the Refuge to reduce the impacts of feeding. Conversely, the State of Wyoming has its head in the sand regarding its feeding program.
There have been two main actions on the Refuge to better manage feeding. First, the Refuge began feeding alfalfa pellets to elk, which are consumed more quickly than hay so that elk get off the feedlines sooner. Second, spread out the feedlines to the greatest extent possible.
Part of the problem the Refuge faces is the inability of G&F;Department to bring the Jackson Elk Herd down to objective and reduce elk numbers that winter on the Refuge. This is very difficult because no hunting is allowed in Grand Teton National Park west of the Snake River. Consequently, numbers of elk in the Grand Teton segment of the Jackson Herd have risen, while numbers in the other three segments have remained stable or fallen. In other words, the inability to reduce elk numbers on the Refuge is a consequence of being unable to fully target numbers of elk in the Grand Teton Segment for reduction.
Unfortunately, because of the politics of elk feedgrounds, the EIS fails to assess the possibilities of restoring traditional elk migration routes, which would be a necessary element in getting feedgrounds closed. All of these corridors are on Forest Service land. Conservationists such as myself have long supported the restoration of these corridors, particularly through the Gros Ventre down into the Green River Basin, but State feedgrounds are designed to block those migration routes.
In other words, to reduce/cease feeding on the Refuge, elk have to have someplace else to go. In most cases, there are other places to go, but the State feedgrounds have to be closed first.
That's why our primary focus right now is State feedgrounds and not the Refuge.