The Wyoming Game and Fish Commission assembled Thursday for presentations on wolf management, the state's brucellosis test and slaughter program, the Absaroka Elk ecology project, animal damage claims and fish health, among others.

Here are some highlights from Thursday's meeting:

Brucellosis in elk

Game and Fish employees are completing the third year of a five-year experimental brucellosis test and removal program on elk feedgrounds near Pinedale. Elk are captured in traps and tested for exposure to the disease, and those cow elk that test positive are slaughtered.

The department spent $342,000 on the program in 2006, $293,000 the following year and $93,000 so far this winter, though much of the costs this year have yet to be tabulated.

Field workers operated solely on the Muddy Creek feedground for the first two winters, and they added the Fall Creek feedground this year. Next winter they will add a third and final feedground, in order to carry out stipulations set forth by Gov. Dave Freudenthal's brucellosis coordination team.

Capturing elk in corral-style traps in the middle of winter has proved difficult, Game and Fish officials said at Thursday's meeting.

"We've never done this before, so it's all a learning process," said Brandon Scurlock, field supervisor for the program.

Game and Fish biologists have caught about 750 elk cows since the program began, of which 92 tested positive for exposure to brucellosis bacteria. Of those 92, about one-third actually had an active brucellosis infection, Scurlock said.

"Clearly, trapping elk on this type of scale has never been attempted before," said Terry Cleveland, director of the Game and Fish Department. "Emotionally, this is difficult work for our people, and they should be commended for the work they've done. This is a significant, significant accomplishment taking into consideration the logistics and conditions on the ground."

Wolves and elk in the Absarokas

The Game and Fish Department is also conducting a study on the relationships between wolf, elk and livestock management.

University of Wyoming professor Matthew Kauffman, an assistant leader of the Wyoming Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Survey, presented a summary for the commission of the Absaroka elk ecology project, where elk in the Absaroka Range are captured, collared, medically examined and tested, and their movements are tracked.

Although not the primary objective of the project, Kauffman said, the research team has begun to explore interactions between elk and wolves - surveying which types of elk the wolves are choosing to hunt, and the impacts of wolf predation on the herds.

Results are still preliminary, but it appears that habitat and long-term drought are having greater effects on the elk than wolves are, Kauffman said.

"The last eight or nine years of drought have been the worst period for drought in 100 years," Kauffman told the commission.

It appears that wolves are taking fewer elk in the area than hunters are at this point, he said.

"I don't doubt they have an effect. We're just not sure yet how much, and what it is," Kauffman said.

Decline of the Jackson moose herd

Moose numbers in northwest Wyoming have been declining in recent decades, and Kauffman and other researchers are in the midst of an ongoing cooperative research project attempting to determine why.

Moose are captured, collared, tested and their movements are tracked.

So far researchers have determined that moose around Jackson, in general, have a tendency to faithfully return to the same areas year after year for summer feeding, but wander more and change locations in the winter.

"This points to the importance of summer range to these animals," Kauffman said. The moose do not, by and large, seem to be suffering from diseases, parasites or ticks, he said.

"We're tentatively concluding that these moose appear to be in good physiological condition," Kauffman said. "Adult survival doesn't appear to be significantly depressed."

Wolves probably are not killing moose calves, Kauffman said, but grizzly bears and black bears might be.

Only 22 percent of pregnant moose that have been captured and tagged have given birth to live calves throughout the three-year project, as opposed to 80 percent of 'non-handled' moose having successful births.

Researchers aren't sure why this is happening, Kauffman said, but the research team will use nets to capture its next round of animals, rather than tranquilizers, to see if the exposure to drugs has caused the moose to lose their calves.

The same drug has been used in previous moose capture projects without effecting the moose's live birthrate, he said.

Effects of drilling on antelope

It appears that antelope on the Jonah and Pinedale Anticline gas fields behave similarly to those in open, undeveloped range, said John Beckman of the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Beckman stressed the need for long-term data before scientists can draw any conclusions about the impact of gas field development on the pronghorn populations in Sublette County.

With an estimated 30 to 50 trillion cubic feet of natural gas underneath the herds, the Wildlife Conservation Society is attempting to project the extent of future habitat losses and ground disturbance, and how that might influence pronghorn behavior, and the number of pronghorn living in the area.

The researchers have seen no evidence to date that current drilling operations have affected population numbers, survival rates, disease rates or body condition, Beckman said, but proposed expanded development of the fields could change that in the future.