Posted: Sunday, February 22, 2004 12:00 am
JACKSON (AP) - Environmentalists are calling for the closure of western Wyoming's elk feedgrounds, saying they help spread diseases like brucellosis and chronic wasting disease.
About 13,000 elk feed each winter on 22 state-maintained feedgrounds. Trucks also spread alfalfa pellets each morning for another 6,000 elk on the National Elk Refuge in Jackson Hole.
Because they help draw so many elk, everyone from tourists to business people have a stake in the feedgrounds.
But a report released by the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance last week recommends doing away with them.
"What really came into focus for me is that our wildlife are facing a very, very serious disease threat. The feedgrounds are the single biggest factor in that disease equation," said the group's executive director, Franz Camenzind.
Proponents of the feedgrounds say the criticisms have been overblown.
Steve Meadows, chairman of the Teton County chapter of Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife, Wyoming, said artificial feeding is necessary to replace winter ranges which have been taken over by homes and other human intrusions.
"If you want to go back to a natural system, then we better get out some big bulldozers and take everybody's houses out," he said.
Meadows said the feeding program has been "wildly successful" in maintaining healthy ungulate herds. Shutting down the program would be a mistake, he said, given the limited winter range now available and the pressure on elk and deer from predators - particularly wolves.
"It sounds to me like a recipe for having very few ungulates in the future," he said. "That's something, certainly, my organization can't accept."
The report on the feedgrounds recommends closing two or three to start and studying the effects.
"We're not asking for it to happen overnight," Camenzind said. "Maybe with that process, we will find that there are some feedgrounds that have to be in place for any number of reasons. I hope not, but that's something we all have to consider."
The report was written by Mark Neff, an alliance volunteer now attending graduate school in Oregon. "What we tried to do in this paper is present the science and information in a very straightforward and unbiased manner," Camenzind said.
But Meadows said the report is "not surprising" and "serves their agenda." The alliance has backed closing the feedgrounds for some time.