The plan is done. Now it's time to begin implementing the brucellosis recommendations concerning wildlife in Wyoming.

Wyoming Game and Fish commissioners last week formally endorsed recommendations from the Wyoming Governor's Brucellosis Coordination Team, specifically as they relate to wildlife.
Now it's up to the Game and Fish Department to carry out the recommendations using money the Legislature appropriated for the task, commissioners said.

The team's report recommended the agency draft brucellosis action plans for each of the seven elk herd units in western Wyoming that receive supplemental feed during the winter on state-sponsored feedgrounds.

The report also recommended the department expand its veterinary services program using general fund appropriations from the Legislature. The expansion includes the creation of three new biologist positions.

Other recommendations included having the department construct an elk trap on the Muddy Creek feedgrounds near Pinedale for a test-and-slaughter operation and building some additional fencing in the region to prohibit elk and cattle from commingling.

"This isn't a cure-all, but it is a valid, honest attempt by the state to move forward" with brucellosis eradication efforts, Game and Fish Director Terry Cleveland said.

Brucellosis can cause cattle to abort their first calves and in rare cases can cause undulant fever in humans who consume unpasteurized milk or cheese products.

Wyoming has had five brucellosis outbreaks in cattle in the past year, which caused the state to lose its federal brucellosis-free status. Elk and bison in the greater Yellowstone area are infected with the disease and are suspected of being the source of the livestock infections.

Gov. Dave Freudenthal formed the 19-member task force in February 2004 and charged the group with developing recommendations for solving the state's brucellosis problems. The final report and recommendations were delivered to the governor in January.

Cleveland noted the department has already drafted an action plan for the Pinedale elk herd unit, which entails three feedgrounds. The plan concentrates on reducing commingling between cattle and elk and outlines other best management practices for producers and wildlife managers to follow.

Closing feedgrounds
One of the key issues was a task force vote against endorsing the closing of the single federal and the 23 state elk feedgrounds in western Wyoming. The task force vote was narrowly split, Cleveland said, with a slight majority voting to keep the feedgrounds open.

Task force members did, however, support giving the Game and Fish Department the option of closing or merging feedgrounds as circumstances warrant in the future.

Conservationists attending Friday's meeting in Casper urged the commission to consider other management options to the brucellosis team report, however.

They said the gradual phase-out of perhaps as many as eight of the state's feedgrounds is a much better solution for the state's brucellosis problem.

"It's a recipe for disaster if you stay with feeding on the feedgrounds," Wyoming Outdoor Council representative Meredith Taylor said.

She said the department should experiment first with closing the Alkali, Patrol Cabin and Fish Creek feedgrounds in the Gros Ventre area near Jackson. The feedgrounds have been identified in agency studies as being the least necessary and as having the fewest number of elk fed for the fewest number of days each winter, Taylor said.

Cleveland did not discount the possibility of the agency eliminating one or more feedgrounds in the future and said the "team left that door open."

If the agency "finds the opportunity to eliminate feedground while maintaining elk populations, we need to take advantage of that," he said.

"Clearly, feedgrounds are not the most desirable thing to have for wildlife management," Cleveland said. "If we come up with the right set of circumstances and we can address all of the concerns, we would be remiss if we didn't do that. But we still have an awful lot of ground to plow (before that happens)."

Commissioner Bill Williams noted the department expects to learn a "great deal" about infection rates and prevalence of the disease under the test-and-slaughter pilot project at the Muddy Creek feedground.

"There's tons of issues to be solved before we close feedgrounds," Williams said.

Bob Wharff, director of Wyoming's Sportsmen for Fish and Wildlife who served on the governor's brucellosis team, said his group does not support feedground closures for fear of its possible impacts to other species -- such as deer and bighorn sheep -- that compete with elk for available winter range.

"We haven't had a hard Wyoming winter in a few years, and it's easy to say we can make (closing feedgrounds) happen now," he said. "But the feedgrounds were designed (for those hard winters), and if we get back to one ... that will be the true test to see if that will, in fact, be an option."

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