Wyoming Game & Fish commissioners were told Tuesday that the ongoing brucellosis test-and-slaughter program in the Pinedale area was "discouraging" this past winter, with even more challenges to come.

Scott Talbott, assistant division chief of Game and Fish's Wildlife Division, reported to the commissioners that department personnel set a corral trap three times this past winter, with limited success on the Muddy Creek feedground.

In response, the Game and Fish Department plans to expand the program to the Fall Creek feedground for the 2007-08 winter and to the Scab Creek feedground the following winter, Talbott said.

Those feedgrounds typically receive much more snow than Muddy Creek.

Talbott explained that G&F staff has researched whether it would be possible to remove seropositive elk cows via tracked and ski-equipped vehicles and trailers, ultimately decided that wasn't a viable option.

Instead, said Talbott, the department will need to periodically plow-out the roads into the feedgrounds, so that brucellosis-tainted animals can be hauled away for slaughter. He estimated that it would cost $70,000 to keep the road to the Fall Creek feedground open during the feeding season when a test and slaughter program can be conducted. The specially-designed capture corral will likely be erected on nearby Bureau of Land Management land, Talbott said.

As he showed a photograph of the Scab Creek feedground site, Talbott noted the presence of numerous boulders in the area, which would probably require blasting to clear a site where a capture corral could be erected.

In any event, said Talbott, a bad blizzard could make it impossible to plow out the access roads to the Fall and Scab creek feedgrounds. The road into Fall Creek is 10 miles while the road into Scab Creek is 6.5 miles.

The plan is apparently not without critics who said the plan may not have the desired effect of curbing the disease.

Wyoming regained its brucellosis-free status in cattle earlier this year after losing it in 2003.

"This year, WGFD could hardly catch an elk to test or slaughter on the feedgrounds," said Meredith Taylor, a conservationist with Wyoming Outdoor Council. "Next year's plan to proceed with even more expensive facilities to trap, test and slaughter elk on feedgrounds when the practice only helps spread disease demonstrates what an ineffective practice test and slaughter is for Brucellosis control. Density-dependant diseases thrive on elk feedgrounds contaminating them with assorted bacteria, viruses and prions."

Lloyd Dorsey, a Jackson Hole representative for the Greater Yellowstone Conservation group, said the current and anticipated difficulties with the test and slaughter program are just more examples as to why the overall program is a bad idea.

Dorsey said it makes far more biological and economic sense to phase out the feedgrounds, rather than pursue the test and slaughter program. Wyoming conservation groups have repeatedly warned the commission that the feedgrounds will experience catastrophic mortality once chronic wasting disease hits the feedgrounds. Chronic wasting disease has been found 100 air miles from the nearest feedground, said Taylor.

Conservationists also cite studies that brucellosis will naturally "burn out" in a dispersed elk population, noting the absence or extremely low infection rate among elk herds that do not frequent winter feedgrounds.

Brucellosis is endemic on feedgrounds in northwest Wyoming. Animals on the National Elk Refuge, a 25,000-acre area, have an average brucellosis infection rate of about 15 percent. Since 2003, brucellosis rates on state-run feedgrounds have varied widely, from 9 percent to 37 percent, with an average infection rate of 23.5 percent, according to a Game and Fish paper on elk feedgrounds.

The department's test and slaughter program is a five-year experiment that is designed to show whether removal of seropositive elk can ultimately lower and perhaps eliminate the prevalence of brucellosis in infected elk herds.

Talbott said the 2006 test and slaughter season was much more successful that the 2007 season. In 2006, Game & Fish staff trapped 306 elk and tested 171, which turned up 58 elk cows which were seropositive n indicating exposure to the brucellosis bacterium, which can cause calves to abort. Of the 58 seropositive elk cows, 18 were ultimately determined to be infected by a blood culture test. In the 2006 season, 54 animals were hauled off to slaughter.

In the 2007 season, Talbott said only one of three trap events actually worked, moving 176 elk through the chutes, testing 79 animals, of which 13 were seropositive and hauled off for slaughter.

In the past two years, Talbott estimated the department had expended 8,500 hours of staff time. Each capture effort takes about 45 people, he said.

One change this year, said Talbott, was how the department distributed the elk meat. After the 2006 test-and- slaughter campaign, the meat was distributed to the public on a first-come, first-served basis, which bothered some people, Talbott said ruefully.

This year, said Talbott, the meat was distributed by the Rocky Mountain Distribution Center, which distributes donated and government-surplus foods to the needy.