JACKSON - Continued cattle grazing in Grand Teton National Park is still being considered, despite 50-year-old goals of Congress to phase the activity out, a park official said Thursday.

Mary Gibson Scott, Grand Teton's new superintendent, said meetings with Washington, D.C., officials are ongoing and continued grazing, as well as its elimination, are both on the table.

Grazing in the park has been contentious in recent years, and groups in Jackson Hole have been examining the relationship between cattle grazing on public lands and open space in the valley.

Scott made her announcement at a meeting of the Governor's Brucellosis Task Force. The group formed to provide recommendations to the governor on long-term solutions to the state's brucellosis problem.

Brucellosis is transmitted to cattle from elk and bison, and the disease can cause cows to abort. A series of outbreaks in Wyoming has caused the state to lose its brucellosis-free status, crippling ranchers trying to sell their cattle.

But ranchers at Thursday's meeting said the risk of cattle being infected in Grand Teton is low, a statement echoed by the park's senior wildlife biologist.

"Our herd obviously is the subject of lots of discussion," said Kelly Lockhart, owner of the Jackson Hole Hereford Ranch and one of the last two main cattle ranchers utilizing the park. "We do our very best to assess the risk and manage the risk and try not to have risk above tolerance that we think is acceptable. This herd has been bled and tested probably more than any herd in the state of Wyoming."

Lockhart said his herd is clean, despite the fact that it came in contact with a Teton County herd that had one animal test positive for brucellosis this summer.

"I want to make it clear to this group that as far as we know … any transmission of brucellosis to our herd did not come from the park because we were tested prior to that," he said. "So I just want to make it clear to everyone that if, to our knowledge, there was a problem in Teton County, it was not due to this grazing on public land."

Kate Mead with the Mead Ranch, the other permittee in Grand Teton, said in "all the years" moving cattle, intermingling between cattle and wildlife is "really very minor."

Ranchers at the Mead Ranch have said they do not intend to graze in the park anymore.

Park biologist Steve Cain said typically when cattle move onto range in the park, any wildlife moves off.

"Within a few hours, those bison leave the pasture," he said. "Wild bison for the most part in Grand Teton avoid cattle."

He also said elk and bison isolate themselves during birthing and clean up birth sites, reducing the risk of brucellosis transmission. The disease is often transmitted through birthing fluids or aborted fetuses.

There has never been a documented case of brucellosis passing from bison to cattle.

Grand Teton has hosted cattle grazers since its expansion in 1950. Ranchers grazing at the time were a "grandfathered" use, up to their last living descendants. In 1997, grazing was allowed to continue after the death of the last descendant pending a study evaluating the relationship between open space and public lands grazing.

No decisions have yet been made about the future of park grazing.

Environmental reporter Whitney Royster can be reached at (307) 734-0260 or at royster@trib.com.