Dear HCN,
Karen Mockler’s recent
report, “Are Wyoming’s elk feedgrounds a hotbed of disease?” (HCN,
4/29/02: Are Wyoming’s elk feedgrounds a hotbed of disease?),
reminded me again of journalism’s greatest weaknesses: No matter
how good the report is, there are never enough column inches to
tell the whole story, and sometimes crucial facts fall through the
cracks.
Her report gives the untrue impression
that conservationists, by calling for the phaseout of elk
feedgrounds – what I call elk ghettos – to combat disease, would
ruthlessly force a drastic reduction of elk
numbers.
Wyoming conservationists have never
advocated simply closing ghetto-feedgrounds and letting elk starve
by the thousands. This claim is a political branding iron that the
Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD) and livestock and big-game
outfitting organizations have flamed into the public’s sensitive
hide to excite opposition to the strategy, particularly among
hunters.
The Yellowstone country is desperately
sick. It is we who have made it sick * not wildlife. Yet, we can
heal it partially by how we manage wildlife. Therefore, in the case
of elk, along with ghetto closures, we propose a drastic reduction
of elk densities by widely distributing elk across the landscape to
reduce the risk of disease transmission as well as elk damage to
other wildlife and plant communities. Reducing densities is far
different from reducing raw numbers.
The
necessary, expensive, and admittedly politically difficult factor
is acquiring, developing and protecting habitat at the landscape
scale, chiefly winter range and migration corridors, so that elk
have lots of places to go and ways to get there. We are convinced
expanding habitat is possible, so the expense and the critics’
vituperation will be worth it. The money’s certainly there. Only
political vision and courage are lacking.
In
embryo, this strategy is at work east of the Continental Divide in
the upper country of the Wind River watershed, where I live.
Between 1941 and 1991, when the WGFD was still willing to stand up
to the livestock industry’s paranoia over government buying
marginal land out of agricultural production and devoting it to
wildlife, the agency purchased thousands of acres of winter range
from willing, prudent ranchers. The East Fork winter range now
encompasses almost 55,000 acres – twice as much as the National Elk
Refuge in Jackson Hole.
In 2002, the only disease
in Wind River elk, brucellosis, comes only with a few ghetto elk
that migrate across the divide. Elk that remain in the watershed
are healthy because their densities are so low, especially on
winter range. When elk aren’t fed in winter, all evidence indicates
that brucellosis will burn itself out.
At the
same time, the Wind River herd of 7,000 is the largest free-ranging
herd in Wyoming. So much for
numbers.
Unfortunately, the WGFD doesn’t talk
much about the Wind River country anymore, and hardly listens to
citizens. It listens only to industry and the politicians who
represent industry. That’s the tragedy of Wyoming’s elk ghettos.
The WGFD acts like a jacklit deer calmly awaiting the poacher’s
blast.
Robert
Hoskins
Dubois,
Wyoming
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Wyoming Game and Fish is a jacklit deer.
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