3 elk feed grounds to stay
 

The decision to continue feeding is “extremely unfortunate,” said Franz Camenzind, Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance director whose group was among three that proposed the closures.

By Cory Hatch JACKSON HOLE DAILY
May 05,2006

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department has decided not to close three elk feed grounds in the Gros Ventre Valley northeast of Jackson despite worries they aid the spread of diseases.

The closures would go against elk management objectives and would hamper elk hunting in the region, officials said. Elk on feed grounds – the department runs 22 in Northwest Wyoming – have a higher incidence of brucellosis, a bacterial infection that affects elk, bison, cattle, and even humans.

Conservation groups proposed the closures last year as a way to reduce prevalence of the disease. They also said such action is the best defense against chronic wasting disease, seen as a larger threat to wildlife.

The decision to continue feeding is “extremely unfortunate,” said Franz Camenzind, Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance director whose group was among three that proposed the closures.

Closing the feed grounds would pose logistical problems, said John Emmerich, assistant chief of the wildlife division at the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. Fences would have to be built around ranches to prevent hungry elk from mingling with livestock.

“They [the elk] are going to go someplace to look for feed,” Emmerich said in a telephone interview from Cheyenne. “We feel there would have to be support from the private landowners downstream of the Gros Ventre to adopt management practices to prevent co-mingling. That’s totally out of our hands.”

Further, Emmerich said the National Elk Refuge would have to be willing to support more elk if the animals decided to move from the Gros Ventre to the refuge. The National Elk Refuge is currently trying to decrease the size of its elk herd.

Wyoming Game and Fish Department wildlife biologist Doug Brimeyer said the closures might have hurt both bighorn sheep and moose, because the areas where those animals feed overlap with elk ranges.

In addition to the conservation alliance, the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and the Wyoming Outdoor Council asked for the closures as an experiment.

“I think it [the decision] is blocking the door to a disease-free future,” Camenzind said. “We think it’s essential to spread the elk out on their native ranges, reducing the chance of spreading the disease and reducing the infection rate.”

Elk foraging in natural areas have only single-digit infection rates, Camenzind said, while elk at the feed grounds have double-digit infection rates because of their close proximity to one another.

“It’s like having kids in kindergarten,” where flu spreads easily, he said.

Camenzind called the proposed closures “a test” and said that the Gros Ventre is an ideal site because it’s the feed ground area most isolated from cattle ranches. The valley also is public land and it gets the least amount of snow in the area.

While elk might infect more livestock in the short term, Camenzind said the possible long-term decrease of brucellosis is worth the risk. But more important, he said, is the benefit of a defense against chronic wasting disease. Keeping elk spread out over their native ranges instead of clumped around feed grounds would help protect elk against CWD, a fatal disease that affects deer and elk and is similar to “mad cow” disease.

Brucellosis, while normally not fatal, usually causes elk to abort their first pregnancy and cattle to abort their first and sometimes their second pregnancy. In humans, the brucellosis bacteria causes flu-like symptoms, sometimes chronic, that include fever, sweats, headaches, back pains, and weakness. Undulant fever is incurable and is the reason milk is pasteurized.

Humans and animals can become infected by either eating, drinking, or inhaling the bacteria. Brucellosis can also pass from a nursing mother to an infant through breast milk.

 

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