Dozens of measures are on the table for the Jackson Herd, and another handful for the Pinedale Herd as part of a long-term effort to keep elk populations healthy in the face of an unprecedented disease threat.
By Mike Koshmrl, WyoFile
JACKSON, Wyo. — The century-long debate over feeding the Jackson Elk Herd constitutes one of the “most complex wildlife management issues” in North America, Wyoming Game and Fish Department Director Angi Bruce says.
It’s an issue that involves hunters, outfitters, wildlife enthusiasts, landowners, four federal agencies, state statute, the town of Jackson and other considerations, Bruce pointed out Saturday from a Teton County Library conference room.
“It’s not easy,” she said.
Bruce made the remarks to a crowd of about five dozen western Wyoming residents who’d gathered to learn about and discuss wildlife managers’ plans to address a disease that threatens to vastly reduce the renowned 10,000-animal Jackson Elk Herd.
“I think we’re all here because we have one common goal: We want to see healthy elk populations continue,” Bruce said.
The discussion focused on planned actions to keep chronic wasting disease at bay. That planning was a long time in the making: Although elk feedgrounds were once addressed in Wyoming’s CWD Management Plan, during a 2017 update, agency officials made the call to divorce the two issues and address feedgrounds later.
Nine years later, there are now specific plans intended to keep elk herds healthy on five feedgrounds used by the Pinedale and Jackson elk herds. They come just in time. Incurable and always lethal, CWD remains at trace levels in the Jackson Herd after showing up in 2020, but it’s beginning to spread throughout the region and was detected on four feedgrounds in winter 2024-25.
Meeting-goers in Jackson on Saturday were equipped with a draft “feedground action management plan” for the Jackson Herd, which dwells in Jackson Hole and the Gros Ventre River valley. The document is complex in its own right: The 34-page plan outlines 37 different measures that Game and Fish plans to pursue immediately, plus another 11 actions that could come later on.
Thursday in Pinedale, a smaller crowd was presented with a similar, though more succinct “feedground action management plan” for the roughly 2,000-animal Pinedale Herd. That eight-page plan outlines six different “priorities” for the herd’s Fall, Scab and Muddy Creek elk feedgrounds.
‘Playbooks’
The plans are fluid rather than rigid, and they’re considered “internal,” ever-changing documents. They are not mandates. And they don’t get approved by the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission.
Dan Smith, the agency’s chief warden, likened the action plans to a sports “playbook.”
“Sometimes plays work, sometimes they don’t, sometimes they work in a certain situation,” Smith told the Jackson crowd.
Some plays are banished.
Because of a 2021 state law, Game and Fish lacks the authority to close an elk feedground on its own. That decision is now made by the governor, but closure proposals are also subject to Wyoming Livestock Board review.
The revocation of wildlife managers’ power is notable because the latest, best-available science suggests that closing feedgrounds will provide the best long-term outcomes for CWD-stricken elk populations and, in turn, for elk hunting. Projections suggest closing feedgrounds would also reduce elk populations and do so sooner, but numbers would stay higher and less stricken by a devastating disease.
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department’s overarching elk feedground plan also constrains the playbook. Specifically, under the 2024 plan, any major changes to elk feedgrounds must be broadly supported, including by historically pro-feeding parties like ranchers and hunting outfitters. For that reason, the proposals wildlife managers unveiled last week had previously been vetted with those interest groups and others.
The broader feedground plan also imposed “sideboards” on the feedground action plans. Wildlife managers cannot, for example, reduce the population goal of an elk herd without going through the normal public and Wyoming Game and Fish Commission review process. They’re also required to “minimize elk damage to private property” — a potential outcome if feedgrounds don’t operate or are phased out.
Since they cannot close or make major, unpopular changes to elk feedgrounds, wildlife managers had to get creative as they drafted specific measures over the past 18 months.
So what can they do?
The “priorities” identified for the Pinedale Herd’s three feedgrounds are geared toward spreading elk out and inhibiting the spread of prions, the infectious vectors of chronic wasting disease. Prions can live outside of animal hosts in the environment for years, bind with the soil and even uptake into grasses — problematic qualities for animals that gather in the same spot year after year.
The top priority for the Pinedale Herd’s Fall Creek and Muddy Creek feedgrounds is acquiring a $400,000 tractor and storage shed that will assist in the elk feeding process.
“Where we have heavy equipment — meaning large tractors — we can dramatically increase the size of that feedground,” Game and Fish Pinedale Region Supervisor John Lund said.
Meanwhile, at the Scab Creek Feedground — the first state-run elk feedground where CWD was detected — Game and Fish’s top priority is to expand the feedground onto adjoining public or private land.
Another priority shared for all of the Pinedale Herd feedgrounds is pursuing “elk occupancy agreements” — essentially paying ranchers to host elk. Also on the list is fundraising $200,000 to $400,000 to purchase a Sublette County incinerator.
“We would love to get one for the region,” Lund said. “If we pick up a dead elk that we suspect is a CWD-positive, or a deer or anything, that’s the one way to truly dispose of it and not take any risks of spreading prions.”
In its current construction, the Pinedale Herd’s plan does not peg any specific actions to the progression of CWD, which could be exponential in a dense population.
“If prevalence dramatically goes up — which it could, on feedgrounds — we’re going to be reviewing these,” Lund said.
At the Pinedale meeting, participants shared ideas for improving the plans.
One man encouraged state wildlife managers to look at restoring a migration route. Animals that now go to the Muddy Creek Feedground along the southern front of the Wind River Range could instead winter in the Golden Triangle region, he said.
“You want to decrease density, throw them out on that desert,” the man said.
Two people shared ideas for funding the plans. Three of the Pinedale Herd’s shared priorities are costly: the tractors, incinerator and the occupancy agreements. Charge tourists for elk-viewing sleigh rides like they do on the National Elk Refuge, one woman suggested. Another proposed adding mitigation fees to the disputed Normally Pressured Lance gas field to fundraise.
Meanwhile in Jackson
Suggestions offered at the Teton County Library concerning the Jackson Herd plan were much more sprawling. It’s a more complex situation. Among the 37 actions are a review of the Jackson Elk Herd’s population objective, a new radio-collaring effort and removing already unused feedground quotas.
Exacerbating the complexity is the reality that state wildlife officials don’t have jurisdiction over the National Elk Refuge, which is a unit of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. That’s where the majority of elk in the Jackson Herd spend their winter, and a separate planning process is underway to chart a future for elk feeding on the 24,700-acre federal refuge.
“We’re still working through the process,” said National Elk Refuge Manager Frank Durbian, who attended the Game and Fish meeting. “We got an extension through the end of this year.”
The National Elk Refuge’s previous plan mostly failed to achieve objectives of trimming the refuge elk numbers to 5,000, a figure that wildlife managers believe could allow them to skip feeding operations during average winters.
Former Game and Fish Director Brian Nesvik, President Trump’s pick to lead the Fish and Wildlife Service, will ultimately call the shots on the refuge plan. As a state director, Nesvik supported elk feeding and called for staying the course when CWD arrived.
In the Jackson Herd area, Game and Fish does have full jurisdiction over two state-run feedgrounds: the Patrol Cabin and Fish Creek units, both located up the Gros Ventre River drainage. A third, located at Alkali Creek, was eliminated in 2019 after years of litigation.
In breakout groups to discuss the Jackson Herd “action” plan, much of the conversation turned to the difficulties of keeping elk up the Gros Ventre and away from the National Elk Refuge.
“Our deal is mainly the wolves,” said Jay Hoggan, the state’s longtime elk feeder up the Gros Ventre.
Hoggan touched on the winter of 2017-18, when almost all of the thousands of elk (only 10 elk remained) left their normal wintering grounds up the Gros Ventre. The herd ended up on the National Elk Refuge instead.
Eight years later, history is repeating itself. During the 2026 surveys, just 127 elk — less than 2% of the Jackson Herd — were tallied up the Gros Ventre drainage, according to Game and Fish wildlife biologist Aly Courtemanch.
Wolves have been studied as a potential driver of the Gros Ventre elk exodus, but the science is far from settled. It was a low snow year the last time all the elk left in the winter of 2017-18. That’s counterintuitive, because little snow means open slopes and more to eat, yet the elk left anyway.
Conditions in the 2025-26 winter, the warmest on record, are very similar.
“It’s kind of crazy that in a winter like this — it’s wide open — all the elk are still staying on the refuge,” Courtemanch said. “It’s something we’re looking into.”
WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.
