WYOMING — Yesterday, six conservation groups submitted a comprehensive recommendation to the Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD), calling on the state to begin phasing out 22 state-run feedgrounds in northwestern Wyoming.
The recommendation from the Sierra Club, Gallatin Wildlife Association, Yellowstone to Uintas Connection, Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, Wyoming Wildlife Advocates and Western Watersheds Project calls on the WGFD to create a feedground management plan that begins phasing out of feeding in the 2023/2024 winter and for all state-run feedgrounds to be phased out by 2028.
The groups also want WGFD to create a plan that explicitly recognizes “the important role that native carnivores play in reducing the spread of chronic wasting disease and brucellosis, for protection of existing elk migration corridors, and for strategies to restore migratory behavior where natural animal movements have been disrupted by artificial feeding.”
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a highly contagious fatal neurological disease that kills elk, deer and moose and spreads rapidly when large numbers of animals congregate. It has steadily progressed across Wyoming over the past 20 years, and recently has been documented in Grand Teton National Park and immediately adjacent to several state-run feedgrounds.
In December of 2020, WGFD announced that an elk harvested during the elk reduction program in Grand Teton National had tested positive for CWD.
The neurological disease is highly contagious and passed from animal to animal through saliva, feces, urine, and decomposing carcasses. Because CWD is extremely resistant, environments that were contaminated by an infected carcass can infect other animals.
Feedgrounds can perpetuate the disease because larges numbers of elk congregate in one area — if an animal is infected the disease can spread quickly through the herd.
“It is, quite literally, only a short matter of time before chronic wasting disease manifests as a full-blown epidemic in elk herds that frequent feedgrounds,” said Erik Molvar of Western Watersheds Project.
One reason feedgrounds exist is to keep elk off agricultural lands and winter cattle feed lines. According to Wyofile, “feedgrounds reduce Game and Fish reimbursement costs to ranchers and diminish the spread of brucellosis, a bovine disease that has its own draconian effect on stock-growing industry.”
“No other state attempts to use a state-run elk feeding program to deal with wildlife conflicts, even though they face similar situations with competition between cattle and ungulates for forage on public lands, pressure from livestock owners to prioritize livestock use of public land forage over wildlife use, and loss of winter range to private ownership,” said Chelsea Carson of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance.
The coalition calls on wildlife managers to investigate how neighboring states like Colorado manage their elk without feedgrounds.
“If a state such as Colorado – virtually the same size as Wyoming with considerably less public land and many more people – can manage to sustain 2.6 times more wild elk than Wyoming without resorting to winter feeding, Wyoming could do the same,” said Kaycee Prevedel of Sierra Club Wyoming.
According to data from WGFD, About 20,000 of the state’s 112,000 elk population use the National Elk Refuge and 22 Department-operated feedgrounds in Teton, Sublette and Lincoln counties of western Wyoming. The department also concludes that elk herds in western Wyoming rely heavily on feedgrounds for winter ranges because the traditional migratory routes and winter ranges are now developed areas.
“The science tells us that closure of feedgrounds and moving to natural forage is the only solution to reducing disease transmission,” said John Carter of Yellowstone to Uintas Connection. “The livestock industry also needs to step up. Plant communities have lost much of their productivity and ability to sustain wildlife because of overgrazing on public lands. The Wyoming Livestock Board, which has veto power over any plan to close the feedgrounds, must allow closures to proceed.”
In 2021, Governor Mark Gordon signed a bill into law transferring the authority over feedgrounds in Wyoming from the Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD) to the Governor. The Governor controls the permanent closures of feedgrounds, with input from WGFD, the Wyoming Livestock Board, and the public. The governor also has the right to close any feedground, “due to emergency circumstances” for no more than 6 months.
