The Wyoming Game and Fish Department released a plan late last month that tackles how it plans to manage the more than 10,000 elk that make up the Jackson Herd.
Down the road, it could help answer questions like why some are leaving their native winter range north of Jackson in the Gros Ventre.
The plan is part of the larger statewide Feedground Management Plan. The department’s Commission signed off on it in 2024 after years of public engagement.
The FMP’s overarching goals focus on reducing the spread of disease, like the always-fatal Chronic Wasting Disease, and easing elk off feedgrounds altogether.
Wyoming is the only state in the country with such a comprehensive feeding program in place, which keeps the population artificially high. Though, the Jackson Herd currently sits at about 10,000 elk, which is about 1,000 less than the state’s ideal number of the ungulates, according to Game and Fish.
The 34-page Jackson Herd plan is a playbook of 37 first-tier items, or immediate measures that support the FMP’s overarching objectives. Another 11 measures are stashed for later, should the first series get implemented and second-tier items are deemed feasible.
At a recent workshop in Jackson, members of the public wanted to better understand why some elk have left their native winter range in the Gros Ventre drainage. Stakeholders like outfitters want to keep feedgrounds alive to keep the area’s steady flow of elk, while environmental groups tend to prefer phasing them out.
Jackson’s Regional Wildlife Supervisor Brad Hovinga said analyzing just that is part of the action plan.
“We don’t exactly know everything we’d like to know about why that happens,” the Game and Fish supervisor said. “We do know over time, elk have used native winter range in the Gros Ventre less and feed grounds more.”
State Wildlife Management Coordinator Cheyenne Stewart said there has been interest in looking into the winter human-presence closures on the forest.
“There’s concern that this might open up Pandora’s box of management, “ Stewart said. “We just want to be really clear that we are trying to understand what might affect elk behavior in a way that can accomplish the [FMP’s] goals.”
Those goals, Stewart added, involve managing a robust elk population that winters in the Gros Ventre.
The reintroduction of wolves in the 1990s could play a role in the trickle of elk leaving the range, Hovinga said. The elk that do leave often wind up to the south, in the National Elk Refuge.
The federal management plans for the refuge, which is not under state purview, instead call for a decrease in population there. Hovinga said beside public engagement, the federal plans, which stem from the 2007 Bison and Elk Management Plan, play a factor in how the Jackson Herd is managed.
Figuring out why the elk are leaving the Gros Ventre will take some more time and resources, Hovinga said.
“That still requires a lot of ground work and a lot of wildlife management work through our collaring efforts to be able to determine elk density distribution and migration patterns of these elk,” Hovinga said, referencing a recent and ongoing effort to track the elk that leave.
