No refuge from worry

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

By Ben Cannon

Jackson Hole, Wyo.- When Barry Reiswig came to manage the National Elk Refuge 11 years ago, he inherited a situation where his managing philosophy was not infrequently at odds with D.C. policy makers, veterinarians, agricultural and sports interest groups, environmentalists and a century’s worth of local attitudes.

In winter, the Elk Refuge, a 25,000-acre swath of protected land bordering the town of Jackson to the north, is home to a dense population of not only thousands of elk but a growing buffalo herd.

The elk, not as hearty or well-equipped as bison to forage deep snow in the winter, often rely on the palletized alfalfa laid out for them by the refuge, a policy Reiswig by and large takes issue with.

The close proximity of the elk to one another during the harshest time of year can lead to scenarios where disease can be transmitted much more easily than if the elk were to wander on more sprawling, natural winter feed grounds. Chief among the diseases facing the herd is brucellosis, a bacteria that causes cows to abort calves and currently thins the herd by about 7 percent.  But, more ominously, the prospect of Chronic Wasting Disease and a handful of other, perhaps even unforeseen, diseases is not too far a stretch of the imagination.

Reiswig believes feeding elk may keep them through the winter now, but in the long run could lead to rampant disease that could threaten the herd.

Earlier this month, Reiswig, who bought a house in Cody and is relocating there with his wife, announced his retirement. During one of his days on the job (his successor has already moved in), he sat with Planet Jackson Hole to look back at the well being of the Jackson Hole elk herd over the last decade and the last century, and how what he feels misguided policy could have devastating ramifications.

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Planet Jackson Hole: What was the state of affairs for elk management when you arrived 11 years ago?

Barry Reiswig: Brucellosis was huge.  Governors were making task forces and everyone was running around, not just here but in Montana and Idaho. That was one of the reasons I was sent here – I knew about livestock and livestock management, and folks thought if you want to deal with the brucellosis issue, you should really know about cattle management.

PJH: When you first arrived, what jumped out at you as the first steps to help get a handle on the situation?

BR: There were really a lot of different things. The livestock folks were battling the wildlife folks. The disease management folks – the state veterinarians – were all at odds with each other. Everyone was blaming everyone else for the brucellosis issue. Nobody was working together on anything

It was really just a free for all. They had a brucellosis meeting which I believe was in Gardiner (Mont.), and this gal came up and threw a bucket of blood and guts on the guys on the panel. I mean, it was just a real contentious issue at that point in time. There was a lot of speculation, a lot of finger pointing. Much of the action was up … in Yellowstone.

Brucellosis was just coming down into this part of the ecosystem – it hadn’t yet come down like it did later. The governor had a task force that flew around to different towns and had meetings about brucellosis. It was really just a contentious issue.

PJH: When you came in as manager, what did you do on your end to help sort things out?

BR: What really struck me was that brucellosis was caused by our feeding program.  These animals just didn’t get brucellosis. They got it because we fed them, and I found that very interesting.

Our management was causing that disease to occur in these elk. The more we dug into it, it was not just that disease, it was a bunch of other diseases. The fact that these animals are crowded onto a feedground for six months out of the year – the most severe six months a year – allowed the transmission of not only brucellosis but a number of other diseases to occur.

If you really want to get at the heart of the problem you have to deal with the feeding program. That was not a very popular answer because there was a lot of concern that we’ve got to have this many elk. I think when I first got here we had almost 19,000 elk in the herd unit and the objective was 11,000.

We had a lot of elk. We didn’t have a lot of buffalo then, but we had a tremendous number of elk. Some of us started saying, “Number one: We’ve got too many elk for any scenario.” When you’re way over your objective you have these disease issues.
Secondly, the way we managed these elk is the root of the problem, and we need to start looking at ways to start managing these elk differently, and that did not meet with a lot of enthusiasm.

So there were vaccination programs and a lot of research into veterinary solutions to the problems, and as time went on, those didn’t work either. We’ve vaccinated thousands of elk with [vaccination] Strain-19, and that didn’t work because the vaccine was not effective in elk. … We had spent all this money on these “band-aid solutions” without striking at the heart of the problem.

There was also an effort made to lower the elk herd, and so harvest levels were increased. Two-elk limits were started – that was unheard of when I first got here and we didn’t even know if hunters would go for it or what they would do when we offered them the opportunity to take a second elk, and it proved to be quite popular and the herd slowly did come down to where it is now, at about 13,000, which is still about 2,000 over its objective.

… Finally the Greater Yellowstone Interagency Brucellosis Committee was formed, and it was made up of state veterinarians, Animal Plant Health Inspection Service veterinarians, Game and Fish Departments, Park Service, Fish and Wildlife Services, and we met I think four times a year, and they were generally very hostile meetings. Nobody wanted to work together on anything and not a lot was accomplished.

PJH: Could you explain what some of these group dynamics are that would explain the dysfunction of these sit-downs?

BR: You have the animal health industry, which was state veterinarians, APHIS veterinarians – they wanted to eliminate brucellosis right now. Whatever it took, they were going to get rid of it in elk and bison.

PJH:  What’s their motivation?

BR: Well, because brucellosis in livestock has nearly been eradicated in the United States. They have gone from millions of infected cattle in the 1930s to almost no infected cattle at the turn of millennium, and they wanted to wipe out this last pocket of brucellosis and declare the United States brucellosis-free.

That has trade implications and those types of things, but they couldn’t do that if they had elk and buffalo with brucellosis in this area and with the threat that it could be transferred to livestock. So they were out to get rid of it.

Wildlife interests were concerned that elk and bison were going to get clobbered – either wiped out or numbers reduced or some kind of Draconian measure was going to be used to get rid of this disease in these animals, massive test-and-slaughter programs where they round up thousands and thousands of animals, and you did see that in the past with bison.  

And then you had environmental groups, like Buffalo Field Campaign, who thought the whole thing was nuts. You know they didn’t want to see any of this going on. And so you had these very much opposing dynamics squaring off at these meetings and slugging it out with each other.

And there were a lot of veterinarians at these meetings proposing veterinary solutions to try to solve the problem through vaccines or something, and that never has panned out either. … Again, from our perspective, we looked at it and said, “Well, the problem is the feeding program.” Nobody wanted to hear that in Wyoming because the feeding program is pretty much a sacred deal.

PJH: Was that a difficult thing for you to say in your position?

BR: It was very unpopular and I appreciate the fact that if you stop the feeding program you either had to find another way to winter these animals or you’re going to have a lot fewer animals. There’s no middle-of-the-road deal and we didn’t have these answers either. … But we were concerned about some of the things that were being proposed that we thought were pretty well over-the-top in terms of wildlife management practices and scenarios.

PJH: What groups most support feeding?

BR: The livestock industry supports it because if you have elk on the feedground then they’re not on the public range, and sportsmen’s groups also tend to support feeding. It’s very interesting when you think about this whole area, and I’m looking down to Farson and over to Big Piney, Pinedale, and up through here.

In the winter you’re got millions of acres of public land, yet elk are confined to these 23 little postage stamp areas, while the rest – some of it winter range – is almost totally devoid of elk. If you go to northern Colorado, they have 80,000 elk in two counties, across large blocks of winter lands. Here you have no elk except that you have them confined to 23 little dots which are disease centers causing brucellosis and the other problems we have today. It’s an odd system of management. Why shouldn’t elk be on winter ranges like antelope and deer. Why do they need to be confined to these feed grounds? 

I think this has more to do with politics than it does with science. I think some folks have been very successful at keeping elk off the public ranges to reserve that grass for their livestock. However, it’s not that simple. Again, some of these winter ranges are in poor condition. Some have gas wells on them. It’s not just simple enough to say to move them on a winter range would be hunky dory. Still, it’s a little odd that we have tens of thousands of elk cooped up to these little ranges.

It’s a long-term effort to bring all the groups together to slowly begin to reintroduce elk to those winter ranges, which are very fragile country: thin soils, severe climates, not a lot of rain. They don’t respond well to rehabilitation in a lot of cases. It’s time consuming. If we started today it would take us decades to get to that point – if we got to that point. But the feedground thing is eventually going to collapse. These disease issues will catch up to us.

PJH: What other tools do you have to thin out the population? Mainly through hunting?

BR: Harvest is probably the way most people would find acceptable. If you stop feeding them and have a tough winter, obviously a lot of them are going to starve to death. That’s not acceptable to a lot of people, especially in a fishbowl like Jackson.

You know, elk starve every winter somewhere on winter ranges outside of people’s sight and it’s not that big a deal, but in a community like this, where people have fed elk for a century, any type of winter loss is not well perceived.

Basically we’ve got way too many animals on too small an area for too long a time. They’re way over the Elk Refuge’s carrying capacity. And with the increase of the bison herd, from a couple hundred to well over a thousand, we really have a lot of pressure on this relatively small winter range. And so the feeding program has gotten bigger. If you didn’t have the feeding program, you would have far fewer animals than you have now [and] you also probably wouldn’t have these disease issues. This crowding is pushing these disease issues; there’s no question about it.

PJH: What was your reaction to “Hay Day” last December, when you see dozens and dozens of trucks bringing in literally tons of hay to donate?

BR: That idea was totally misplaced. They totally missed the point. We’ve got to stop looking for band-aid solutions. We’ve got to start taking the long view. And that long view is we need to find winter ranges for these animals, and that’s not going to be easy to do, and we need to get those animals scattered around these winter ranges and off of this feed. Until we do that we’re never going to deal with this disease potential.

If we get Chronic Wasting Disease, which is only 100 miles away now, that is an entirely new disease we have no way to control, yet … the percentages of infection tend to go very high in these crowded of conditions.

So the folks that come in with, “We’ve got the solution: We’ll just feed them more.” That’s a misguided approach … doomed for failure.

We need to take a long-term – 20-, 30-, 40-year – approach and get those animals out where those disease potentials go back down and they can survive the winter. And that’s not easy either. How do you do that? How do you get elk that have been on a feedground for 100 years to start going out to a winter range? And a lot of winter range, which are located in areas south of here, are in very poor condition. They were damaged by the overgrazing activities of the early 1900s. ….

Thousands of acres are being taken out for gas development [and there] is not room for much of any wildlife. So you’ve got these competing uses for these winter ranges. It’s not an easy solution, but I think that the notion that we’re just going to keep feeding and feeding and feeding is, in the end, not going to serve us well.

I thought the folks at Hay Day totally, completely missed the point. The problems are just moved back to another day. That day of reckoning is coming, though. And you have to look at the world today. Diseases travel in weeks if not days. The big oceans used to protect us to some degree. … Now you’ve got to do everything you can to keep your populations as protected as possible from these types of outbreaks, and crowding them together on a feed ground is not the way to do that.

I can appreciate the history of the situation. I mean, this came about 100 years ago when ranchers and hunters were trying to keep the elk from starving to death. It made sense back in 1910. They didn’t see all these huge changes that would come by 100 years later. But the situation has changed and we have to, I think, take the long view and start preparing for the day when we have elk wintering in places other than these crowded feedgrounds. That’s not going to be easy to do but I think the alternative could be a lot worse.

Feeding continues to remain very popular in Wyoming. It is not popular elsewhere. Both the State of Idaho and the State of Montana have asked us to start phasing out the feeding program. The United States Animal Health Organization asked us to phase out the feeding program. Once you leave Wyoming, feed programs are not popular because of the disease issues that they have.

PJH: Do you think the elk is in some way the iconic animal of Jackson Hole?

BR: I think traditionally it certainly has been. In most other places, back in the turn of the 19th century, they just shot all the elk. Entire subspecies were wiped out. People here took a little different approach because many of the ranchers were also outfitters. They didn’t just shoot them when they got mixed in with their cattle.

They fed them, got a refuge established. They tried to protect the elk. And I think the elk became the signature species for Jackson Hole.

Another thing is they’re so visible. A lot of places you have to travel into the deep backcountry to see elk winter or summer. Here you can come and see thousands from the highway.

I mean, here they are, they’re right next to town. They kind of became part of the community. The feeding program, of course, held the animals in. You can take a sleigh rides; people could go out amongst the elk. I think the town and the people associated themselves to a certain degree with the elk because they were kind of the signature species for Jackson. … Of course, there are many species people also look at as very interesting in Jackson Hole – grizzlies, wolves, trumpeter swans, bald eagles, some fish species … but to a significant degree, the elk herd is kind of a symbol of Jackson Hole.

PJH: It would seem that that kind of community identity and support would be a blessing from a management standpoint, but as you mentioned it’s “in the fishbowl.”

BR: It’s a mixed blessing. One of the former Game & Fish supervisors made the comment that there were 5,000 elk biologists in Jackson and none of them worked for him. I think that’s a very true statement. A lot of people have an interest in elk in Jackson, and they all have different ideas about what they think should be done [laughs], but that also makes it very challenging if you want to move an idea forward.

PJH: Is it fair to say the refuge is a dynamic and not a static place, and if so where is it now? What is impending? What do you foresee in the near future?

BR: The final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) has directed a fairly complex set of new prescriptions that range from reducing the bison herd by half and the elk herd by one-third, but very carefully. Only certain segments of the Jackson herd are to be targeted for that reduction. That’s going to be very complex to achieve.

It also prescribes increasing forage production, which will involve very intensive agricultural practices: sprinkler irrigation and the kind of stuff you see in more highly agricultural areas. There will be almost 700 more acres of that and it’s going to be very expensive and a fairly intensive management scenario to produce more forage. You do that so that the herd will be less reliant on pelletized feed, which creates the concentration that leads to disease. You’re going to see important areas fenced out to protect aspen and cottonwood from the intense browsing that is just wiping out aspen and cottonwood on the refuge.

So, it’s a fairly complex set of management prescriptions. Some people argue it will do very little good in the end, that when all the changes are in place and all is said and done, you’re still going to have very significant disease issues on the refuge. And that is certainly a possibility. It will be very interesting to see how this shakes out.

There are also those who feel that this document did not follow the laws, policies and regulations of the agency with regard to managing the refuge. I would expect they were going to challenge this EIS and try to get it thrown out fairly soon by folks who feel this document is so out of bounds it will have to be redone.

PJH: If you were staying on, would you be one of these people moving to redo this EIS?

BR: Well, the decision’s been made and I would have been required to follow it, but I don’t think we went far enough to deal with the problems we’re facing. It was a compromise, and some say with compromise there is no gain. …

We haven’t ended anything. We’ve moved from one chapter to another. We moved from  development of an EIS chapter to a litigation chapter. In the litigation chapter we’re going to hear what the courts have to say about our document. If they think we did not follow the law, we’re going to get that sucker back and start over.

PJH: How would you reflect on your style of management, or your legacy even?

BR: I tried to move the issue down the road, away from livestock, or what I call animal husbandry, treating elk like cattle. I tried to move in the direction of managing them as wild animals. I don’t think we really got very far. It is such a contentious issue and there is so much support for feeding and other livestock practices that we really didn’t move the issue down the road nearly far enough for my druthers.

PJH: Next February, when you’re driving by the Elk Refuge as a passerby, what would you hope to see?

BR: Not a lot of snow and a lot of forage on the ground, so the elk don’t have to be fed. I mean I really fear for the future. Our planning horizon seems to be in months and it needs to be in decades. We need to start thinking long-term about the future of these animals and we need to start preparing now because its going to take a long time to make the changes I think we need to make to have a future for these animals.

Photo by Lindsey Ross.
Barry Reiswig, manager of the National Elk Refuge for last 11 years, retired last week. His plans include moving to Cody with his wife.

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