CAT URBIGKIT Star-Tribune correspondent | Posted: Friday, January 19, 2007 12:00 am
BOULDER - With temperatures registering minus 32 on the Muddy Creek elk feedground at the base of the Wind River Mountains near here Thursday, Scott Werbelow of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department waited in a haystack.
Watching for a chance to trip the trigger on an elk trap, he stayed in the hay for five hours before finally calling it quits for the day.
A few elk would file in, eat a little hay, then wander back outside the trap to lie in the sun. Thus, for the second day in a row, not enough elk entered the trap to make the trapping and testing effort worthwhile. So the project was called off, delayed for at least a week.
Agency officials had hoped to capture the elk so they could be tested for brucellosis, a bacterial-caused disease of the reproductive tract that causes abortion and is common in elk and bison in western Wyoming. Animals that test positive for the disease are slated to be removed to a slaughter facility so that additional tissue may be obtained for further testing.
The Game and Fish Department hopes this five-year project will reduce the brucellosis rate of elk in the Pinedale elk herd. But critics say as long as the agency maintains the 22 supplemental feedgrounds in western Wyoming, brucellosis will continue to plague elk herds throughout the region regardless of the test-and-slaughter project. They contend the elk will be killed for no good reason.
Dozens of state and federal agency personnel waited in idling vehicles a few miles from the feedground were briefed about 2 p.m. Thursday about the day's effort. Werbelow reported that on Jan. 11, state officials had counted 228 test-eligible elk on the feedground. Because the disease is associated with the reproductive tract, only breeding-age female elk are tested.
On Thursday, a total of 150 to 175 elk entered the trap, Werbelow said, but that simply wasn't enough of the test-eligible animals to make the effort worthwhile.
The elk remained wary, he said, behaving as though they know it's a trap. With not nearly as much snow on the ground as was present during last year's successful trapping effort, Werbelow also noted that the elk are pawing through the snow for natural forage as well, so they may not be hungry enough to enter the trap, which has been baited with hay.
Werbelow said that capture efforts would be made again in about 10 days, and until then, the elk feeder will continue to feed the elk in the trap. There are about 400 elk using the feedground this winter.
In the winter of 2005-06, 58 cow elk testing positive for brucellosis exposure were removed from the Muddy Creek feedground and slaughtered. The meat was distributed free to people around Wyoming.
The cost of the first year's trapping effort was estimated at $342,848, which is about $5,900 per elk removed.