Wyoming Feedgrounds
Double as CWD Time Bomb
By Bill Schneider,
11-03-05
Elk hunters in the Greater Yellowstone Area
should start thinking like they’re living below
a huge dam with cracks in it. They know what’s
going to happen. It’s only a matter of time, and
it’s guaranteed to be devastating.
That dam is located in northwestern Wyoming,
mostly in the Upper Green River Basin, but also
around Jackson. It manifests itself in the form
of twenty-two state-managed feedgrounds, where
the State of Wyoming collectively feeds up to
20,000 elk during severe winters, and the famous
National Elk Refuge managed by the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service.
It’s a time-honored principle of wildlife
management that when you feed wildlife, you pay
a big price for it. For elk hunters—and
everybody else who likes seeing elk—that bill
will soon be due because Wyoming’s feedgrounds
double as a Chronic Wasting Disease time bomb
ready to explode.
“That’s true," answers Robert Hoskins, president
of the Dubois Wildlife Association and long-time
opponent to the feedgrounds, when asked if he
agrees. “It is a time bomb because the State of
Wyoming refuses to consider any proposal to
close the feedgrounds. We’re just waiting for
CWD to hit. We’re doing everything we can to
stop the feeding, but we are rebuffed every
time. The livestock industry is in complete
control of this whole thing."
“It’s an eventuality," agrees Tom Roffe, chief
of wildlife health and veterinarian for the Fish
and Wildlife Service in Bozeman. “It’s not a
matter of if, but when."
And when it happens, what will we do? The answer
to that question should send a shiver up the
spine of every elk hunter because the solution
could be worse than the problem.
Wyoming has documented cases of CWD in both elk
and mule deer dating back thirty years. The
disease has been slowly moving northwest from
the southeastern corner of the state. In recent
years, there have been several documented CWD
cases in the Thermopolis area, which is only
about thirty air miles from the Upper Green
River Basin, but still east of the Continental
Divide. Roffe finishes the grim picture by
pointing out that radio-collared elk have been
documented traveling from the feedgrounds back
and forth over the Divide. For elk hunters, this
is like looking out your window and seeing water
starting to leak through cracks in the dam.
In CWD outbreaks on game farms, the disease has
killed up to 50 percent of the animals, but in
wild populations, mortality is much lower. Roffe
likens the feedgrounds to a situation somewhere
between free-ranging elk and captive herds on
game farms, so mortality will be high, but
probably not 50 percent. “Nobody knows what it
will be,‿ he says.
But even 50 percent mortality on the feedgrounds
might seem like a minor problem compared to the
solution to a CWD epidemic. Montana, for
example, has formalized a CWD response plan that
includes an option for killing all elk in the
area around the outbreak. Wyoming has a plan,
too, but it does not include the “depopulation‿
option. Not yet!
Wyoming’s plan is, according to both Roffe and
Hoskins, basically waiting for the disease to
hit the feedgrounds and then deal with it in
three ways—reduce density, reduce feeding, and
spread out the elk herd.
“Why would you not do that before it gets
there," Roffe asks. “Wyoming’s plan will be too
little, too late." He compares it to waiting for
avian flu pandemic instead of trying to prevent
it from happening.
Hoskins points out the absence of barriers for
elk carrying CWD from moving from the
feedgrounds to Idaho and Montana and infecting
populations there. “It’s a slow process, but it
will get to Montana and Idaho."
“Prevention is the best action," Roffe insists.
“If we want to have a success, there has to be a
prevention plan."
The punch line is: Nobody has a good solution
for dealing with an outbreak of CWD in our wild
elk herds, and it’s almost guaranteed to happen
in Wyoming. The best case scenario might be
letting the disease run its course and lose a
huge percentage of our elk populations. The
worse case scenario might be trying to eradicate
it. Wildlife officials are understandably
skittish about saying this out loud, but any
attempt to eradicate the disease would involve
killing lots of elk. On the Wyoming feedgrounds,
in fact, it could easily mean killing many
thousands.
There are ways to minimize the risk in advance,
and stopping the feeding tops the list. In
reality, the feedgrounds are no different than
game farms, which have been banned in Wyoming
since the early 1970s. They concentrate wildlife
and create circumstances favorable to spreading
the disease. Hoskins, never lost for words or
energy to stop the feeding, describes the
feedgrounds as “petri dishes for spreading
disease."
Roffe agrees. “The feedgrounds are bringing elk
into close proximity and enhancing the
probability of spreading CWD."
Let’s be clear on one key point. This is not a
Wyoming problem. Instead, it’s a massive threat
to elk populations throughout the Rocky Mountain
West. We can only hope Wyoming sees the gravity
of the situation and acts before it’s too late.
Wyoming has resisted placing feedgrounds east of
the Continental Divide. Instead, the state has
concentrated on protecting key winter range to
keep the elk population high, a similar strategy
used successfully in Montana. Now, Wyoming
wildlife officials and conservation
organizations need to grow the backbone
necessary to take on the livestock lobby for the
benefit of wildlife and hunters and close the
feedgrounds west of the Divide.
http://www.newwest.net/index.php/main/article/4189/C41/L41
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