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In mid-February, two adult female elk on the Dell Creek Feedground near Bondurant died and tested positive for Chronic Wasting Disease. It was the second incident of the highly transmissible, 100% fatal brain disease on a feedground in the Cowboy State. The first was in December on a separate feedground near Pinedale.
According to game managers, the disease threatens the health of elk statewide, especially the thousands of elk in six herds in the northwest part of the state that winter on feedgrounds. Feedgrounds are controversial. Experts believe they bring elk too close, where disease can more easily spread.
The state wildlife agency is working on feedground management action plans to limit disease while continuing feeding. The agency aims to complete one for each herd, the first for the Jackson Herd.
KHOL’s Dante Filpula Ankney talked with Ben Wise, a state wildlife biologist, who said the confirmed cases at the Dell Creek Feedground south of Jackson mean disease prevalence in the area is likely higher than they had previously thought. Higher prevalence, means higher likelihood of transmission.
This transcript has been edited for clarity.
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DFA: Could tell me about a couple of recently confirmed cases of CWD south of Jackson?
BW: So we’ve recently had several positive animals turn up on feedgrounds in the Pinedale region. One of the most concerning is the several confirmed CWD-positive elk that have been found at Dell Creek Feedground, which is in the Bondurant basin. Not that far, geographically, from Jackson. It’s on the Hoback River. The Hoback River flows into the Snake [River] just south of town. We know that there are animals that are using the Dell Creek feedground that are sharing boundaries with elk from the Fall Creek Elk herd and the Jackson elk herd. So it’s close in proximity. It’s much closer in proximity than the CWD positive elk that we found at Scab Creek Feedground. So from my standpoint, being in the Jackson region and dealing with wildlife disease in the Jackson region, that is really concerning for me.
DFA: Why is it so concerning?
BW: We had assumed that when we started detecting CWD in elk in western Wyoming, it would be pretty slow. Kind of like what we’ve seen in other parts of the feedground system. We had an elk that tested positive in the Jackson Elk herd in 2020, just north of the refuge in Grand Teton [National Park]. Just last year we had an elk in the Fall Creek elk herd that tested positive. We kind of assumed that was what it was going to be. It was going to be kind of like sporadically we were going to find one elk, maybe two elk that were deceased but we sampled and CWD was detected. We kind of assumed that we were going to pick it up through a hunter-harvested animal. That’s where the majority of our samples come from. To have it pop up at Dell Creek in multiple animals in the same year, in the same fairly short time span. We’re kind of past that point at that particular feedground. We’re past that slow build. We’re seeing the ramifications of having CWD in that population, where we’re finding dead animals that are skinny, emaciated and they’re coming up positive.
DFA: Would you be willing to say that CWD is encroaching on the Jackson Elk Herd?
BW: It’s coming from all directions. We have deer coming out of the Dubois area that have a fairly high prevalence of CWD in a deer herd. We have a high prevalence in deer in the Shoshone. They’re all coming in and intermingling with elk in the Jackson elk herd.
That was always my concern. We know that [where] there’s deer coming in, there’s probably elk coming in as well, that are at low levels of CWC prevalence, but they’re mixing in. For us to find that many CWD-induced mortalities shows that it’s a concerning realization that, ‘oh, it’s here and it’s at a higher rate than we had anticipated it would be this early in the CWD/feedground situation. We’re fortunate on the refuge. We have a lot of elk on the refuge, but we also have a lot of space for elk on the refuge. Because of the way that the refuge is situated, a lot of times they’re able to delay the start of feeding later into the season and then end feeding earlier.
Elk at high densities have a much higher transmission risk. The amount of time that you can reduce the density, the better off you’ll be, the less transmission risk you’re going to have. So the refuge does a really good job of trying to spread elk out as much as they can when they’re feeding. They have feeding seasons that allow them to have elk on feed for a fairly short period of time. Dell Creek is kind of the opposite of that. Dell Creek is a very, very snowy, very cold part of Wyoming. Snow packs are just exceedingly deep there at times. There’s also a really high risk of brucellosis transmission to neighboring livestock producers.
DFA: Do you have anything to add?
BW: Although it’s very concerning, it’s not totally a surprise that we’re starting to detect it on feedgrounds. We’ve been detecting it in elk feedgrounds for the last several years. I think the most important thing to take away is that we do see that this is a very, very, very serious issue. And because of that, we as an agency have taken on the task of developing ‘F maps’ or feedground management action plans. So part of that planning process is garnering public support for management decisions we’re making on feedgrounds. We work for the state of Wyoming. We work for the people of Wyoming. So if we don’t have the support of the people of Wyoming, we can’t really move forward.
