-Three, four, five. There are a lot of them!” says
the driver of the minivan with Georgia plates parked beside the
highway. Behind us, a screen of spruces hides the famous peaks of
Grand Teton National Park. In front of us, on a sagebrush plain
golden with June flowers, are the rich brown coats and creamy rumps
of a band of cow elk.
“Eight, nine, 10 – I see
15!” he exclaims. “Look, that one has a little one with
her!’
Elk mesmerize visitors to Jackson
Hole.
“It’s not just hunters that want to see
elk,” says Bridger-Teton National Forest biologist Adrian Villaruz,
“but the general public – people who come from cities and suburbs
where their major activities are shopping. They come out here and
say, “Hey, I saw this on TV!” “
But are these
animals as wild as people imagine?
Some 20 miles
south of here, on the outskirts of the town of Jackson, the highway
is bordered by an eight-foot wire fence. Behind this fence last
winter, these same elk were jostling like cattle for alfalfa
pellets spread by the managers of Jackson Hole’s National Elk
Refuge.
While miles away Yellowstone’s northern
elk herd starved to death by the hundreds, the Jackson Hole herd,
11,000 strong, munched placidly on its kibbles. The yearly
spectacle is a big hit with tourists, and some folks have suggested
Yellowstone National Park managers would save themselves a lot of
trouble by feeding the northern elk and bison
herds.
But feeding elk creates as many problems
as the park’s hands-off approach to elk management, called natural
regulation. Wildlife managers and environmentalists say feeding the
elk keeps their numbers dangerously high, and that the animals, a
symbol of wildness, are becoming
domesticated.
Caught between
an elk and
a hungry place
The
valley of Jackson Hole acts as the neck of an enormous funnel that
opens northward toward the southern end of Yellowstone National
Park. Herds of elk follow this funnel south from the highlands of
Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks, the Teton Wilderness
and the Gros Ventre River drainage each fall to feed in the lower
elevation valley, where winters are much
milder.
The first settlers in the area saw the
advantages of the same spot, and their ranches and the town of
Jackson soon blocked the funnel’s neck. At the same time, stock
growers wiped out the herd’s natural predators. Since elk were
protected from hunting in Yellowstone National Park, their numbers
grew exponentially.
During the winter of 1909, an
estimated 20,000 to 30,000 elk converged on Jackson Hole. By
spring, the valley was so full of their carcasses, one rancher
claimed he walked a mile on them.
The following
year, cattle growers persuaded the Wyoming legislature to pay to
feed the elk that were roaming onto their ranches, but hundreds
still died. In 1911, the state asked Congress for
help.
Nationwide, hunters had reduced elk to 20
percent of their former numbers. Northwest Wyoming was one of the
animal’s last sanctuaries. Consequently, in 1912, Congress
established an elk refuge on 1,000 acres of public land north of
Jackson. The intent was to give the elk herds natural winter range,
so wildlife managers wouldn’t need to feed them. But feeding soon
resumed when it became apparent that the refuge was not big enough
to support the herd.
Today, the National Elk
Refuge has grown to 25,000 acres, but the problem remains
intractable. Last winter, more than 11,000 elk ate 2,349 tons of
alfalfa on the refuge. The feed cost the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department
$323,000.
The state of Wyoming also feeds elk at
22 feedgrounds in western Wyoming.
Elk in the
front yard
Just as elk funnel into Jackson Hole
from the high country, hunters, recreationists and tourists flock
to the valley’s woods, trails, boutiques and latte shops. Everybody
watches the elk.
How much the herd contributes to
Jackson’s economy is hard to say. Hunters alone spend $4.4 million
in the area each year, according to the Wyoming Fish and Game
Department. Last year, more than 800,000 people visited the
National Elk Refuge. During the ski season, a sleigh ride through
the feeding herd is a popular adjunct to the nearby
slopes.
“People are getting a lot of money off
these elk,” says Andrea Lococo, local representative of the Fund
For Animals.
But such an unnatural concentration
of wildlife creates many problems. For one thing, elk are hard on
aspen groves, which provide homes for many small mammals and
songbirds. If the elk herd remains at its present size, says the
Forest Service’s Villaruz, “you could lose your aspens.”
Another problem is disease. Nearly 40 percent of
Jackson Hole’s elk show signs of exposure to brucellosis, the
ailment that led the state of Montana to kill more than 1,000 bison
around Yellowstone last winter. “Brucellosis is an artifact of
feedgrounds,” according to refuge manager Barry Reiswig. On native
range, only 2 percent of elk are exposed to the
disease.
The disease wildlife managers fear most
is tuberculosis, found in game-farm elk in other states and readily
transmissible to humans. Although tuberculosis has not turned up in
the Jackson Hole herd yet, once introduced, it would spread like
wildfire.
Finally, there is the question of
whether elk that spend their winters on a feedline remain wild. An
elk whose greatest daily challenge is bulling its way through a
crowd to a pile of pellets is probably different than one that
winters on native range.
According to Montana elk
expert Terry Lonner, Jackson Hole elk are approaching the status of
“defiled wild’ – animals that depend on people to survive. Some of
the elk that winter on the refuge are over 20 years old. Last
winter, only about 2 percent of the herd succumbed to the harsh
weather.
“Any elk with two legs can drag itself
to the feedline in the winter,” says
Reiswig.
Weaning elk off the
feedlines
Since 1958, the Fish and Wildlife
Service, the National Park Service, the Forest Service and the
state of Wyoming have coordinated their management of elk through
the Jackson Hole Cooperative Studies Group. Their main tool is
hunting, which is allowed even in the southeast part of Teton
National Park. But despite longer hunting seasons and cow elk
hunts, the herd continues to boom.
The Grand
Teton park herd is of particular concern. The elk have learned to
elude hunters by waiting in the protected part of the park until
darkness falls, then making a run for the refuge. This herd takes
the lion’s share of the subsidized feed. Reiswig estimates that
half the animals he feeds come from the park. Jackson Hole
outfitter Paul Gilroy puts the figure closer to
three-quarters.
Now, some wildlife managers and
environmentalists want to wean the elk off their feedlines.
Meredith Taylor of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition calls the elk
refuge “nothing but an agency game farm.” Ending the feeding would
be “a bitter pill to swallow now,” says Lloyd Dorsey of the Wyoming
Wildlife Federation, “but it will benefit future generations.”
Dead bodies always look bad, however. “People
see two dead elk out there, and I start to get phone calls,” says
Reiswig. “I would rather do nothing all winter. Running all these
feed trucks is not my idea of a good time. I’m concerned about the
impacts feeding is having on these animals.” But if the feeding
stops, he says, 6,000 to 8,000 elk would starve to death, “right in
front of town.”
While plans to irrigate the elk
refuge may allow it to support more animals, keeping the animals in
balance with the range will mean decreasing the herd. “We can wean
the elk off feeding,” says Reiswig. “Weaning the people off feeding
may be more challenging.”
*Lynne
Bama
Lynne Bama writes from
Wapiti, Wyoming.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Jackson Hole tries “unnatural’ elk management.
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