Sunday, December 11, 2011

Elk feeding grounds in Wyoming criticized

By NICK GEVOCK Montana Standard

Posted: Saturday, December 10, 2011

Associated Press Female elk await brucellosis testing at the Muddy Creek feeding ground south of Pinedale, Wyo., in the Bridger-Teton National Forest in January 2007.
Bruce Smith, of Sheridan, argues in his new book, “Where Elk Roam: Conservation and Biopolitics of Our National Elk Herd,” that Wyoming’s practice of feeding elk on the National Elk Refuge and at feeding grounds around the state has created an overpopulated herd.


BUTTE — The decades-old practice of feeding elk throughout western Wyoming has created a grossly overpopulated herd prone to disease that could cause large die-offs and spread throughout the Yellowstone region.
That’s among the findings of a new book written by Sheridan resident Bruce Smith, a retired wildlife manager who ran the feeding program on the U.S. National Elk Refuge near Jackson, Wyo.

Too many animals

Smith, in his book “Where Elk Roam: Conservation and Biopolitics of Our National Elk Herd,” argues that Wyoming has grown accustomed to holding far more elk than the ecosystem can support in many areas.
And that heavy concentration is setting the herd up to potentially catch chronic wasting disease, which is always fatal in wildlife.
“It’s foolish to try to lead people to believe that a place as snowbound as Jackson Hole can support 12,000 elk, because it never did before,” Smith said. “Those feed grounds in western Wyoming potentially are going to become biological hotspots for spreading chronic wasting disease throughout the greater Yellowstone ecosystem.”

Wildlife manager

Smith, who holds a doctorate in zoology from the University of Wyoming, worked as a wildlife manager on the elk refuge for 22 years before retiring in 2004. He ran the feeding program on the range but said his long history of publications pointed out the problems with the policy.
He said he’s documented how the landscape on the game range has changed over the past century since the elk refuge was designated in 1912. The changes are stark.

“Ninety-five percent of the willow communities are now gone, aspen communities are not replenishing, cottonwood communities are shrinking,” Smith said. “The degradation in the habitat is certainly evidence that the range is overstocked — by definition, if you have to feed the elk the range is overstocked.”
Elk aren’t fed only at the federal refuge in Wyoming. The state operates 22 feeding grounds, some of which are on federal and state land and a handful on private land.

Smith said the feed grounds were largely a concession to the livestock industry in Wyoming to keep migratory elk from moving into valley bottoms and onto private lands.
The herd on the refuge is roughly at 12,000 animals and the state has a target population of 11,000 elk there, Smith said. But in 1997, it had swelled to 19,000 elk. Smith said that type of overpopulation is grossly out of balance with the capacity of the land.
“At that time it was 8,000 over objective — most herds don’t have 8,000 elk in them,” he said. “That management model has outlived its usefulness.”

And those elk have lost their natural instincts to survive without human help. Smith said elk for centuries lived in the mountains around Jackson in the summer and moved to winter range on historic migration routes.
“They migrated long distances to places where grass was more available, where winds blew snow off of them,” he said. “Now the elk have that lost from their herd memory.”
The concentration of elk makes it prone to diseases spread among the large ungulates, and Smith said he’s seen firsthand the effects of that.

Throughout his career he recorded elk on the refuge with scabies, foot rot and brucellosis, among other diseases. But he said as bad as those are, none are as potentially dangerous for elk there as chronic wasting disease.
The disease was first detected in southeastern Wyoming and has since spread as far east as New York, Smith said. It’s always fatal for deer, elk and moose and Smith said they develop no immunities to it. Chronic wasting disease also doesn’t die from heat, cold or UV light, making it uncertain how long it could stick around in the environment.

And he said it’s creeping toward the elk refuge and other feeding grounds in western Wyoming.
“It’s really not like any other disease that we’ve confronted in elk or deer,” Smith said. “I’m not predicting disaster; I’m only saying that it’s a possibility and state and federal resource managers should be taking it seriously.”
Smith concluded that the feeding is not the root problem, but rather a consequence of people wanting more elk in the area than the land will support. He said Jackson’s economy is 85 percent based on tourism and that includes elk hunting both in Grand Teton National Park and on the refuge.

He said the range could likely support roughly 6,000 elk and the area would still draw both wildlife watchers and hunters. But the feeding has become ingrained.
There are a host of economic, political and social reasons why, Smith said. For the feeding to end, it will take a broad constituency of people to campaign for that.

“We need that broad brush of citizens in the middle who have not seen that they have a stake to become involved,” he said. “They own the wildlife just as much as the outfitter and the greenie.”
Terry Lonner, retired chief of research for the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, said Wyoming’s feeding policy has been controversial for a long time. But he agreed with Smith that ending the feeding would be a challenge.

“This has been going on for so long down there that it is going to be extremely difficult to get rid of it, just because of the tradition of doing it,” Lonner said. “We in Montana have been against feeding for decades.”
But Lonner commended Smith for writing a comprehensive book on the subject. He said the threat of chronic wasting disease is real and could change the conversation on the policy.

“If CWD started to become a problem with the elk down there and then if CWD started to transfer to cattle, then something would happen,” he said.

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