Elk line up to feed at the Muddy feedground near Boulder. Elk that are supported by winter feedgrounds have high brucellosis infection rates, while free-ranging animals -- such as the Wiggins Fork herd near Dubois -- are relatively free of disease.

Infected animals

Brucellosis has long existed in and around Yellowstone National Park, in elk and bison, but had not been found in Wyoming cattle since 1987 -- until last year. One popular theory is that the disease arrived many decades ago with infected cattle, which were penned with bison before slaughter and meal preparation for guests in Yellowstone.

The discovery of brucellosis last year in Wyoming cattle south of Yellowstone National Park triggered the loss of Wyoming's brucellosis-free status. The $980 million industry must now absorb costly testing expenses before any of Wyoming's 1.2 million cattle can leave for other states.

Because the infected cattle might have contracted the disease from infected elk, a state-assembled brucellosis task force has focused on elk feedgrounds as the probable source of the cattle's infection. Brucellosis is a contagious bacterial disease that can be spread among cattle, bison and elk and can cause abortions, infertility, reduced milk production and other problems.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has established that brucellosis spreads when wildlife congregate in high numbers, such as on feedgrounds. Brucellosis infection rates on feedgrounds run as high as 50 to 80 percent, suggesting that the feedgrounds serve as continual transmission sites.

According to federal researchers, elk normally prefer to give birth in seclusion, meticulously cleaning up the calving areas by consuming the placental tissues and fluids to avoid attracting predators. A cow elk prefers to keep its calf separate from other animals for the first few days before returning to the herd, a behavior pattern that also reduces the chance for disease transmission.

However, under feedground conditions, elk are more concentrated and less likely to calve in seclusion. Infected elk also may abort during the time they are congregated in the feedgrounds. Under these conditions, the risk of disease spread from elk is increased.
-- Brodie Farquhar

DUBOIS- The rolling hills and red rock country a few miles north by northeast of Dubois are the East Fork winter range, home of the largest free-ranging elk herd in the state.
There are no elk feedgrounds on the 54,000 acres of wildlife habitat pieced together by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department in 26 transactions between 1941 and 1992. Some 6,000 to 7,000 elk inhabit the area.

"It is a tremendous success story," said Greg Anderson, a wildlife biologist at the Game and Fish's Lander office. "Without that habitat, there's no way we could keep that herd at its current population. We'd be spending all our time working conflict issues."
The East Fork stands in marked contrast with the situation west of the Continental Divide in Wyoming. In Sublette, Teton and Lincoln counties, Game and Fish has strategically placed 22 elk feedgrounds. Those state feedgrounds and the National Elk Refuge feedground were established to prevent winter starvation in the herds and to prevent free-ranging elk from feeding on ranchers' livestock forage and haystacks.

The feedgrounds also help sustain elk population levels, to the delight of tourists, outfitters and hunters, but to the consternation of some range managers who say habitat is harmed by too many elk.

Wyoming conservationists cite the East Fork experience near Dubois as the ideal model for elk herd management: lots of habitat and free-ranging, widely dispersed elk, not crowded feedgrounds that treat elk like livestock and breed diseases such as brucellosis.

"On the feedgrounds, elk are fed hay on close feedlines and forced to live in unnaturally high densities," said Robert Hoskins, a conservationist based in Crowheart. "From this practice results continuing exposure to infection from brucellosis, high risk of contamination from other diseases such as bovine tuberculosis and chronic wasting disease, and considerable damage to local habitat, particularly browse."

But state officials and others say it would be difficult, if not impossible, to duplicate the East Fork situation west of the Divide.

Ace in the hole

The Spence-Moriarity/Inberg-Roy Wildlife Habitat Management Area is known to Dubois locals as "the East Fork" and began with the purchase of a single tract of land in 1941. By 1992, after an additional 25 land transactions, the department put together a contiguous winter range complex at the southern Absaroka Front that is more than twice the size of the National Elk Refuge.

Together with state, Bureau of Land Management, private, Wind River Indian Reservation and Forest Service lands, the East Fork adds up to a bloc of wildlife habitat for thousands of elk, not to mention moose, bighorn sheep, grizzly and black bears, deer, wolves and mountain lions.

The Dubois-area elk are known as the Wiggins Fork herd n 6,000 to 7,000 head of free-ranging, well-dispersed, low-density and naturally fed animals.

"The East Fork is the smartest thing the Wyoming (Game and Fish) Commission ever did," said Pete Petera, the department's director at the time of the Spence-Moriarity purchase. Petera said the East Fork elk may be the state's ace in the hole, if Jackson-area elk herds are ever lost by either closing down all the feedgrounds or if the herds ever get wiped out by diseases such as tuberculosis or chronic wasting disease.

In contrast to the brucellosis-"hot" elk herds that frequent Wyoming feedgrounds, the Wiggins Fork herd is relatively free of the disease. It is found only in the segment of the herd that summers west of the Continental Divide with a segment of the Jackson elk herd, Hoskins said.
"The Jackson elk herd has a high rate (of the disease) sustained by the yearly winter feeding regime on the National Elk Refuge," he said. "If the Jackson herd weren't fed, we argue that brucellosis would decline in the Jackson herd and would most likely disappear altogether from the Wiggins Fork herd.

"West of the Divide, the department insists there is no option to feeding elk, except perhaps in the far distant future that will never come. East of the Divide, the same department has the perfect counter-argument to elk feedgrounds."

Why East Fork works

The East Fork works for elk, Hoskins said, thanks to geology, vegetation, lots of room and good management. Gentle glacial mounds have great habitat and forage. Although hay is still raised and cut on the bottomland, a fair amount of it is left behind as a winter food source "backstop" for the harshest of winters.

Dubois outfitter Tory Taylor said Game and Fish made a conscious decision, over several decades, to buy winter habitat on the East Fork, in order to limit game damage to local haystacks and meadows.

"Whenever there was any conflict with cattle feeders in the Dubois area," Taylor said, "the department provided winter range as a solution. There was a real willingness by the department to pounce when likely property came up for sale."

He noted that some states have a "feed elk in an emergency situation only" policy to deal with the odd severe storm or snow levels.

"Brucellosis-infected elk will cleanse themselves of brucellosis in a few years time if allowed to range free," Taylor said.

As of 1994, Game and Fish had spent more than $200 million on feeding elk, he said.
"Folks should think about what $200-plus million of land purchases, habitat improvements and such could have produced," Taylor said. "Instead, Wyoming seems determined to keep throwing good money after bad at feedgrounds with no promise of eliminating brucellosis."
Taylor and Hoskins said they'd like to see the state gradually phase out the feedgrounds west of the Divide, coupled with the purchase of critical wildlife habitat from Jackson to Pinedale and the restoration of migration routes down to the Red Desert.

"No one is recommending the immediate closure of the feedgrounds," Taylor said.

Migration

Taylor and Hoskins cite research and old records n some from the files of Game and Fish n which indicate that there used to be elk migration routes from Yellowstone down to the Red Desert. Deer and antelope follow those same migration routes, they say, but don't get stopped by the feedgrounds like elk do.

Their associates, Lloyd Dorsey of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and Meredith Taylor (Tory's wife) of the Wyoming Outdoor Council, have formalized the migration restoration idea in a program called Restoring Wild Patterns. They want government officials to identify, restore and protect wildlife migration corridors throughout the central and southern reaches of the greater Yellowstone area.

In fact, the group is calling for congressional designation of a "national migration corridor" from the mountain highlands of Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks to the Red Desert.
But Petera, a strong advocate of buying wildlife habitat, is skeptical of migration corridor restoration and doubts that enough wildlife habitat can be purchased between Yellowstone and the Red Desert to make a difference.

"I think that purchasing more wildlife winter range up around Cody could head off some big problems," he said, but he doubts whether there is enough money to buy out Jackson Hole ranches that fetch more than $1,000 an acre.

The Spence/Moriarity unit cots $208 an acre, including state and BLM leases, he said, doubting there are similar good deals between Jackson and Pinedale.

In addition, "I just don't believe we can re-establish migration," said Petera, who also served as a Jackson game warden for 13 years.

Elk that no longer had feedgrounds would tend to accumulate in the Gros Ventre, and a heavy winter would produce herd losses unacceptable to the public, he added.

Terry Pollard, a Pinedale outfitter and member of the state's brucellosis task force, echoed that skepticism.

"I think migration down to the Red Desert is not realistic," he said. "First, there's some big money ranches in the way, and not all of them would be willing to sell. Second, why should the elk migrate through when there's lots of hay on those ranches? Finally, even if they did get down to the Red Desert, there's not enough water. The wild horses are overpopulated, and there's not enough food."

On general principal, Pollard said, he welcomes improving and expanding wildlife habitat because it is good for wildlife. Closing down the feedgrounds, however, could be disastrous for his outfitting business. He cited one Game and Fish study that estimated a loss of 80 percent of the elk between Jackson and Pinedale if the feedgrounds ever closed.

Meredith Taylor counters that elk migration can work, if fences come down and feedgrounds phase out. She said it isn't necessary to buy out the ranchers, not when habitat improvements, conservation easements and fencing the cattle in and the elk out are cheaper than buying out ranchers or operating feedgrounds.

"We want a win-win solution for Wyoming, for livestock and for wildlife," she said.

Top of Page