Wolves move elk off of Wyoming state feedgrounds. That's good news!

Wolves move elk off of Wyoming state feedgrounds.
That's good news!

1-3-2005

More 1-5, 1-7, AND 1-18

The Sublette Examiner, an on-line newspaper in the Pinedale area, has been greatly worked up lately because wolves have "blown off" off elk from eleven of the 23 Wyoming state winter elk feedgrounds.

See: Wolves roaming. By Cat Urbigkit. The Sublette Examiner. Dec. 30, 2004.

Of the three states where the reintroduced wolves live -- Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming -- Wyoming is the state that regularly feeds elk in the winter and has done so for generations.

The results of this much condemned practice have grown increasingly severe. The feedgrounds unnaturally concentrate elk. As a result they are cesspools of disease. Just as predicted by conservationists, one of these feedgrounds last year, the Muddy Creek feedground near Pinedale, passed on brucellosis from the highly infected elk to nearby cattle, and Wyoming lost its "brucellosis free" status once it was shown that cattle from Sublette County had infected another Wyoming cattle operation.

For years the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission was told feeding elk was a dangerous practice. Their response was to begin vaccinating elk on the feedgrounds with a brucellosis vaccine for cattle ("strain 19"). Infection rates, as predicted by many, did not decline. There was in fact no difference in infection on vaccinated and unvaccinated feedlots. Over the last three years Wyoming elk have infected cattle in first, Teton County, Idaho; Sublette County, Wyoming, and, most recently, Teton County, Wyoming (Jackson Hole). The Sublette County cattle subsequently infected cattle in Washakie County.

1-7-05. Regarding the Teton County, Idaho case which was covered by the news media very gently, and not for long, a former Idaho Fish and Game employee wrote to me that the "ranch/farm [was] along Conant Creek. It was not a dairy. The owners had been warned many times not to feed the elk and certainly not to feed them with their cows. When I tried to stop them, they immediately ran to [a former] state senator . . . who made F&G back off. Their small herd of Herefords was destroyed and of course we the taxpayers compensated them."

After the disease transmission from a herd in one county to another, Wyoming's Governor Freudenthal created an emergency brucellosis task force.

The obvious solution is to do away with the feedlots because elk that "winter out" in Wyoming, avoiding the feedlots have a very low brucellosis infection rate.

Not only are the feedlots an ideal way of infecting elk (and bison and cattle) because highly infectious aborted elk fetuses are dropped in mid-winter amidst the hay being fed, worse diseases are expected to invade the feedlots -- chronic wasting ("mad-elk") disease and tuberculosis. In the past, before wolves in Wyoming, the largest elk mortalities on feedgrounds were outbreaks of pasteurella and necrotic stomatitis. These are directly related to winter feeding of hay in concentrated population conditions. Mortalities ran 300% or more than normal on the feedgrounds. Annual feedground mortality before wolves was lower from predation, but higher from disease. Moreover, the cow/calf ratio the next spring is lower on feedgrounds compared to wintered out elk.

Did the governor's brucellosis task force recommend phasing out the feed lots? No, they are going to try an experimental "test and slaughter" program for the elk. The plans calls for starting at the notorious Muddy Creek feedground. They would build a five-mile fence and 8-foot-high corral where elk would be captured, run through a chute and tested for exposure to brucellosis. Infected elk would be killed. The rest would go to the feedground where . . . oopps . . . they would probably reacquire the disease from inflected elk that came in from other directions.

Eventually an annual winter elk slaughter would be expanded to all the state elk feedgrounds. This is being justified as a way to save the elk. It has been suggested, but hardly proven, that Wyoming elk populations will decline by 80 per cent with no winter feedgrounds. How is it that Idaho and Montana have huge elk herds without feedgrounds? Is it that Wyoming ranchers, and gas drillers simply don't want to share winter range?

Meanwhile back to the wolves.

Predators follow the prey. Wolves, coyotes, and cougar follow ungulates to their artificial or natural wintering grounds in Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming. Naturally wolves soon showed up at the artificial state feedgrounds and the National Elk Refuge at Jackson Hole. Wolves have preferred the state feedgrounds, perhaps because there is more cover for them to hide at many of them.

The clearly visible predation at the feedgrounds stirred a big controversy. Perhaps it was that some in Wyoming lack the courage to see the natural drama of predator and prey. More likely, it was felt that predation was excessive, although 3 years of winter studies at the state feedgrounds in the Gros Ventre have not shown this to be. Some believe that infected elk will wander and winter with cattle.

Irritating to feedground operators, however, is that wolves make elk behave like wild animals rather than livestock. The Teton wolf pack in the Gros Ventre River drainage often moves elk from one of the three feedgrounds in the drainage to the others, disturbing Game and Fish's system of hay storage at each feedground. Game and Fish was stocking hay as for livestock, and the elk were moving to safety like their wild brothers and sisters.

If the winter is cold and the snow deep, however, the elk soon return to the feedgrounds with hay. That is why there is little need to worry about the elk being "blown off" the 11 feedgrounds. The winter has been mild, many of the elk have in the past, and will again return this year, if they get hungry.

A best case scenario is the wolves will move the elk off of misplaced high elevation feedgrounds like North Piney and out onto the desert serving to restore the ancient migration corridors that have been disrupted by the originally well intentioned feeding program (as well as other factors). Note that the elk that went from North Piney to the lower elevation Bench feedground are not really on the Bench feedground. According to Urbigkit's article they are on natural vegetation further downhill.

As a side benefit, for folks in Utah and Colorado, the further wolves come downhill and south, the more likely they will keep going south.

Meanwhile the state, if it can face reality, can begin closing the feedgrounds and purchasing migration corridors and raising hell by getting in the face of the gas industry who wants every acre of public land leased. Of course, it will be easier to repeat the ritual of test, vaccinate, slaughter, and feed, reassuring folks that the mythology of the past will save them.

1-5-2005

Wyoming politicians clearly are not going to change as this news article indicates. Instead Wyoming Game and Fish wants the Daniel wolf pack killed off. "Wolves chasing elk from feedgrounds." Associated Press. Billings Gazette. They claim that scattering the elk will cause poor public relations. Has Wyoming government ever had good public relations with USFWS? Last year they tried false prosecution.

This is not just a Wyoming issue because their diseased elk threaten wildlife and cattle in other states as well as Yellowstone Park. This whole incident shows the good reason why Wyoming did not get wolf management authority like Idaho and Montana will in 30 days.

The news article above also mangles Wyoming wolf population figures by counting wolves inside Yellowstone Park which are no where near cattle. It also repeats the outdated statement that wolf population is growing fast. This is a general AP article. Who wrote this crap?

This is link to a Wyoming Game and Fish apology for their feedgrounds. "Game and Fish Feedgrounds in Wyoming."

A good example of the illogic of this local hysteria is that quote from a Merna area rancher who has seen a big increase of elk on his Forest Service livestock grazing allotment. He claims it's the wolves fault there are more elk. In other words, if elk populations go down, it's wolves' fault. If they go up it's wolves' fault. If there is any fault it's that these ranchers graze the public lands for what amounts for free, while next year we average American saps are going to have to pay to use our public lands.

1-7-2005

The "Jackson Hole News and Guide," an increasingly influential newspaper, editorialized this week that Governor Freudental should "Ditch the [elk] test and slaughter" as costly, contradictory, and doomed to failure, and instead go after the federal livestock bureaucrats.

1-18-2005

Jimenez told me that most of the elk remain well spread out and not on the feedgrounds. I'm not sure if he meant all the state feedgrounds or just those three feedgrounds up the Gros Ventre River. Dispersal of elk up the Gros Ventre will be the most beneficial, and the least likely place where they could infect cattle. It's not clear if the dispersal is due to the mild winter or the wolves.

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