Feds OK 3 more years of Wyoming elk feeding in Hoback Basin where CWD ‘epidemic’ hit

Wyoming wildlife managers will be permitted to throw hay for at least three more winters at two disputed elk feedgrounds, one of which is the site of a chronic wasting disease epidemic that bodes ill for the future of elk populations and hunting. 

Bridger-Teton National Forest Supervisor Chad Hudson made the call to issue a 3-year permit for the Dell Creek and Forest Park elk feedgrounds. His decision, made in the wake of litigation, was “difficult,” “complicated” and not taken lightly, he wrote. 

“Feeding as part of winter elk management in western Wyoming is an emotive and controversial issue, and for good reason,” Hudson wrote in a July 30 decision document that accompanied a final environmental impact statement. “No alternative, with or without feedgrounds, is without tradeoffs and consequences to wildlife, resources, and people.”

The option the Bridger-Teton landed on for the 35-acre Dell Creek and 100-acre Forest Park feedgrounds will allow for continued operations through the winter of 2027-’28. After that, the national forest would again study permits for all seven feedgrounds within its 3.4 million acres, effectively delaying a long-term decision.  

One Bridger-Teton feedground, located up the Gros Ventre River drainage at Alkali Creek, has already been phased out.

Elk feeding is historic in northwestern Wyoming, having begun more than a century ago on the National Elk Refuge. Dell Creek and Forest Park are both at least 45 years old. Proponents say it’s necessary to insulate elk herds from the effects of bad winters, prop up populations and keep wapiti away from cattle. But feeding also spreads disease, contributes to the loss of migration routes and is considered an antiquated wildlife management practice that’s been abandoned elsewhere in the West.

The permit for the Dell Creek Feedground expired in 2022. The Forest Park site’s permit lapsed in 2018. Feeding since then has been authorized via one-year special use permits. 

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department sought a 20-year permit, a request that Hudson denied. Another option the Bridger-Teton weighed would have only allowed elk feeding on an emergency basis. A fourth avenue would have ceased all feeding immediately. In its environmental impact statement assessing the four “alternatives,” the Forest Service did not select a “preferred” option. That fell to Hudson last week.

Forest Service officials enlisted U.S. Geological Survey research biologists to help make a decision that accounted for the spread of CWD, an always lethal prion disease. In a 2023 analysis, disease experts predicted that continuing feeding would produce the worst outcomes for elk populations and elk hunting.

In the two years since that analysis, CWD was documented on the actual footprint of a few feedgrounds for the first time. It especially flared up on and near the Dell Creek Feedground, where six elk tested positive for the degenerative neurological disease, according to Hudson’s decision. 

Because of how CWD spreads, some disease experts worry that prevalence is about to skyrocket.  

“Most of the time [prevalence] just goes straight up,” Wyoming State Wildlife Veterinarian Sam Allen told WyoFile last winter. “I would expect it in this population to go a little bit faster than in some of our other elk populations, considering how feedgrounds are set up.”

An average of 571 elk amassed at the Dell Creek Feedground’s 35 acres over recent winters, according to Game and Fish’s elk feedground management plan. In and of itself, that plan doesn’t compel any reforms, but it does call for herd-specific “Feedground Management Action Plans” that could result in major changes or even phasing out feedgrounds — although only if there’s a consensus to do so.

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Even though elk feeding is continuing at the site for at least three more winters, some plaintiffs who have challenged the practice in court see Hudson’s decision as a “welcome” move. 

“It’s a step in the right direction that signals the Forest Service is beginning to take the chronic wasting disease crisis seriously,” said Dagny Signorelli, the Wyoming director for Western Watersheds Project. “Obviously, we would like to see the agencies phase out these feedgrounds immediately and permanently.”

Bridger-Teton National Forest and Wyoming Game and Fish Department officials were not able to be reached for an interview by the time this story published on Monday.