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Article 2/06/05 |
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Schweitzer
right about elk feeding grounds
Letter to the Editor, Billings Gazette
2/06/05
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Montana
Gov. Brian Schweitzer's concern over Wyoming's elk feedgrounds
is well-placed. I and many other Wyoming citizens support
his efforts to persuade Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal
to phase out the feedgrounds because they enhance and
exacerbate the risk of disease for wildlife as well as
for livestock throughout the entire Greater Yellowstone
Ecosystem, not just Wyoming.
Brucellosis is the current disease of concern, but chronic
wasting disease (CWD), a transmissible spongiform enceph-alopathy
related to "mad cow disease," is marching inexorably
toward the feedgrounds as well.
Once CWD strikes the state of Wyoming's 22 feedgrounds,
on which as many as 20,000 elk are fed each winter, its
most likely path into Montana will be through the Jackson
elk herd to Yellowstone's northern herd.
There is no rational, practical or moral argument that
supports Wyoming's elk feedgrounds, which only exist west
of the Continental Divide in the Upper Green River Basin,
Jackson Hole, the Gros Ventre River drainage and the Greys
River drainage.
Why does Wyoming hang onto its elk feedgrounds, even though
the feedgrounds are the reason Wyoming's livestock industry
recently lost its brucellosis-free status? Paradoxically,
the reason is range politics.
Today, the feedgrounds serve one main purpose: to block
access of otherwise migratory elk to their traditional
winter ranges, mostly on public lands, where forage is
"reserved" for livestock.
As a consequence, Wyo-ming's livestock industry as a whole
must bear the expensive burden of its downgraded brucellosis
status, even though ranchers in three-quarters of the
state have no brucellosis problem because there are no
elk feedgrounds.
Robert Hoskins
Crowheart, Wyo.
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