Fewer elk. Sicker elk. That's what the experts expect if Wyoming keeps on feeding.

If Wyoming keeps throwing hay to help elk survive the winter, the state is creating a future where wapiti will be ravaged by chronic wasting disease and dramatically reduced in number. 

Hunter opportunities, likewise, will fall off significantly. 

At least that’s what the experts expect.

Eight experts, to be exact, including three employees of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. 

Here are their projections for what’s coming to northwest Wyoming elk herds in two decades if state officials entrusted to manage the herds continue feeding while always-lethal CWD propagates:  

Prevalence of CWD in the feedground herds of western Wyoming will reach 42%. The sickness, a cousin of mad cow disease, poses a grave threat to ungulate populations in the West and beyond, and it’s likely to be inflamed by high concentrations of animals on historic feedgrounds meant to keep elk numbers propped up and off private land.

Because the prion disease typically kills its ungulate hosts in fewer than three years, those fed herds would shrink significantly. Keep feeding elk with CWD on the landscape and northwest Wyoming’s Afton, Fall Creek, Piney, Pinedale and Upper Green River elk herds would be lopped nearly in half, declining from roughly 16,000 elk today to 8300 animals in 20 years. 

The eight experts projected that outcomes for the elk herds two decades out are the best if the feedground program is terminated abruptly. Even a three-year phaseout comes with trade-offs compared to cutting feeding cold turkey, causing long-term increases in CWD prevalence and a smaller population. 

The scenarios contemplating what happens if elk feeding continues with CWD endemic were assembled by the U.S. Geological Survey, which prepared a detailed report to help the Bridger-Teton National Forest decide what to do with two up-for-review elk feedgrounds.

So far, CWD, which causes sponge-like lesions in the brain, is just starting to make inroads into the feedground region. A single elk, a cow shot by a hunter in Grand Teton National Park three years ago, tested positive in the feedground region, though mule deer with the deadly malady are being found with greater frequency west of the Continental Divide. 

USGS disease ecologist Paul Cross told WyoFile that it’s impossible to know what CWD transmission will look like over time with certainty within the feedground-dependent elk herds.  

“There’s no analogous case that we can look at,” Cross said. “In the absence of that, I think our best option was to convene a scientific panel.” 

The experts

The eight experts are listed in an appendix to Crosses’ report, “Evaluating management alternatives for Wyoming elk feedgrounds in consideration of chronic wasting disease.” 

They are: Emily Almberg, with the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks; Justin Binfet, with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department; Hank Edwards, with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department (now retired); Nathan Galloway, with the National Park Service; Glen Sargeant, with the U.S. Geological Survey; Brant Schumaker, with the University of Wyoming; Daniel Walsh, with the U.S. Geological Survey; and Ben Wise, with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

“We averaged their responses, essentially, to come up with what we think transmission would look like,” Cross said.

Edwards, who supervised Game and Fish’s Wildlife Health Laboratory before retiring last summer, told WyoFile that predicting what’s coming if feeding continues as CWD spreads is tricky. Prevalence in free-ranging elk herds stays “pretty constant,” he said, and is typically low — the USGS report predicted 13% in year 20. Meanwhile, in captive scenarios where elk raised for meat or research contract the prion disease, prevalence reaches essentially 100% in short order. 

“It’s going to be somewhere between those free-ranging elk and the captive elk,” Edwards said.

The predictions that Edwards contributed to the USGS projections skewed toward the “draconian,” he said. 

“I tended to fall more toward, ‘This is going to be pretty damn serious,’” he said. “I was basing my opinion on data from captive studies. And I was just looking at how brucellosis [a contagious fetus-killing disease that can affect cattle, elk and bison] reacts on the feedgrounds. If we have the right winter, we can see the prevalence jump high very quickly.” 

Wyoming Game and Fish also recently documented a huge spike in bacterial diseases commonly called hoof rot on one feedground, also in response to winter conditions and elk numbers. 

An immediate halt to feeding will shrink the herds, too, the USGS report predicts. These projections were based on the density of elk and the size of winter ranges within the herd units of six other unfed Wyoming elk herds: North Bighorn, Clark’s Fork, Cody, Gooseberry, Wiggins Fork and South Wind River. Elk numbers in the fed herds would fall to 12,500, declining by 23% over the course of 20 years, the study predicts, and much of the decline would come earlier on.

The eight experts predicted that there could be major consequences for Western Wyoming elk herds by even waiting three years to phase out feeding. 

“Three years of feeding, and then stopping for 17 years, can still result in a prevalence that’s 10 [percentage] points higher than no feeding for the 20 years,” Cross said. “That’s just from the three years that [CWD] gets its start and gets going.” 

Past projections

There have been several attempts at modeling just how badly CWD will be exacerbated by elk feeding, which creates unnaturally high densities of animals. On the National Elk Refuge, research has shown that elk contact rates are 2.6 times higher during the feeding season than while elk are naturally foraging.

Nearly a decade ago, Wyoming’s wildlife agency hung its hat on research that suggested that there would not be catastrophic consequences if the state kept feeding in the face of CWD. 

But more recent modeling exercises have painted a more dire picture. Even a prevalence level of only 7% will tip the Jackson Elk Herd — the largest feedground-dependent herd — into a decline, according to 2016 research headed by Colorado State University ecologist Tom Hobbs. 

Other, more recent studies predict an even more disease-ridden future. A 2020 paper headed by former University of Wyoming graduate student Matt Maloney predicted that CWD prevalence in the Pinedale Elk Herd would exceed 75% within 20 years of the disease’s arrival to the feedgrounds. 

Even Edwards — who admitted making “draconian” predictions for the USGS report — believed that the 2020 study’s prevalence estimations were high. 

The USGS’ study did predict some silver linings to maintaining the status quo in the presence of CWD. Keeping the feedgrounds going would result in the lowest brucellosis costs to cattle producers, since stopping the feedgrounds would increase mingling with infected elk. Over two decades, stockgrowers would amass $194,600 in brucellosis-related costs if the feedgrounds continue versus $243,000 if feeding is stopped, a savings of nearly $50,000. 

By other economic measures, the USGS report predicted that immediately stopping feeding is for the best. No feeding resulted in $190 million in regional hunting revenues over the 20 years. However, assuming “moderate reductions in hunter interest” from higher CWD prevalence, these proceeds would decline by $17 million if wildlife managers keep on feeding. 

The USGS’ analysis is being used to help make decisions about whether to permit the Dell Creek and Forest Park feedgrounds, and it’ll also be weighed by the Wyoming Game and Fish Department as the agency completes its first-ever elk feedground management plan. 

“Anytime there’s a model that comes out, that’s the new science, [and] we’re taking some of those projections into consideration,” said Doug Brimeyer, deputy chief of the Game and Fish’s wildlife division. “But we haven’t really had a chance to delve into it.” 

Game and Fish’s feedground management plan is still in the draft phase.

The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission will get an update on a revision at its January meeting in Cheyenne, Brimeyer said, and be presented with a final version of the plan at its March meeting in Pinedale. 

While the Bridger-Teton National Forest could end its eight elk-feeding operations independently, those feedgrounds could be relocated to state or private land and Game and Fish’s draft plan does not call for stopping feeding anytime soon. The plan does, however, state that it “may allow for feedground phase-outs in the future.” 

Even if wildlife managers pursue a phase-out, they’ll face political headwinds. The Wyoming Legislature wrested the authority to close feedgrounds away from state agency in 2021, passing a bill that gave the power to the governor. 

A future chief executive of Wyoming, therefore, will be calling the shots about whether to keep feeding when CWD inevitably picks up steam. If that future governor is inclined to keep on spreading hay, that’ll spell a future with far fewer and far sicker elk — at least according to the predictions of the eight experts.

WyoFile is an independent nonprofit news organization focused on Wyoming people, places and policy.