Wyoming Game and Fish Commission Votes to Keep Elk Reliant on Feedgrounds

Pinedale, WY – Today the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission voted to approve the final Wyoming Elk Feedgrounds Management Plan that sustains the artificial feeding of elk herds, contradicting science-based recommendations, and jeopardizing northwest Wyoming’s delicate ecosystem. The plan, published in February after years of development, was meant to initiate the phased withdrawal of the 21 state run feedgrounds in Western Wyoming by 2028. 

Instead, the plan extends elk dependence on feedgrounds without addressing the health of Wyoming’s elk or ecosystem stability, interrupting migratory patterns and impacting transmission rates of fatal diseases like Hoof rot and Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), and disturbing natural predator-prey dynamics. Despite asserting the need for public support, the plan’s implementation of sideboards discredits public involvement, prioritizing special interests in critical decisions affecting Wyoming’s wildlife and ecosystem.

Elk feedgrounds are managed by the Wyoming Game & Fish Department (WGFD), and are known to be concentrated areas of infection with contact rates increased during the feeding season. The first detection of CWD came in 2020 when a cow that was killed by a hunter in Grand Teton National Park was found to carry the disease. Since then, detections of CWD have been found every year. Last December, four elk were found to have tested positive for CWD near two elk feedgrounds. In November, Wyoming recorded one of the largest documented outbreaks of hoof rot after the infection killed nearly half of the elk calves gathering near the Horse Creek Feedground. The phase out of feedgrounds and transition to natural forage is needed to reduce rapidly increasing rates of disease transmission.

Wyoming is the last state in the Intermountain West to continue to artificially feed elk, despite neighboring states' hosting even larger herds. 

For the WGFD to make critical decisions that prioritize public input and active participation, it must accept public comment on the Feedgrounds Management Action Plans (FMAPs) it develops for six northwestern elk herds. 

“We urgently need science-based wildlife management strategies that offer the best possible opportunity for healthy, free-ranging ungulates to survive into the future,” said Kaycee Prevedel of Sierra Club Wyoming. “As it stands, the plan that the Wyoming Game and Fish Commission approved today fails to propose a concrete strategy that reduces elk reliance on feedgrounds. To prevent an inevitable wildlife disease epidemic, we must implement sustainable and ethical wildlife management practices so that Wyomingites can continue to hunt and view wildlife. A truly wild Wyoming depends on it.”

"No state other than Wyoming routinely uses season-long annual artificial feeding to mitigate wildlife conflicts with livestock or damage to private property, even though surrounding states face the same challenges between private property owners, livestock producers, and wildlife," states Kristin Combs, Wyoming Wildlife Advocates. "It's time for Wyoming to follow the lead of its neighbors and allow elk to forage naturally and return to their natural migration routes while helping livestock producers to implement conflict mitigation strategies."  

“The Game and Fish Department’s head-in-the-sand approach to the crisis it has created is leading to the permanent contamination of the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem with disease agents,” said Jonathan Ratner of Sage Steppe Wild.

“This plan basically retains the status quo of feeding, while livestock consume most of the forage in summer and winter range. The plan has no end and will continue feeding essentially forever. This results in the inevitable spread of disease by concentrating elk, and the continued persecution of predators and scavengers which select diseased animals, carcasses and are agents that can help reduce disease,” said John Carter of the Yellowstone to Uintas Connection

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