A nonprofit conservation group is paying Wyoming cattle ranchers for internet hosting elk herds on their land. The initiative led by the Greater Yellowstone Coalition is billed as an effort to scale back the state’s reliance on elk feedgrounds, which may be breeding grounds for chronic wasting disease. Funds for wildlife tolerance are a transfer that’s turning into extra widespread within the West and has extensive enchantment for landowners, but additionally provides some public hunters pause.
The Better Yellowstone Coalition, Wyoming Fish and Recreation Division, and the Knobloch Household Basis initiated the primary “elk occupancy agreements” in 2019. The GYC manages two agreements in Teton County and just lately added a brand new cope with Spring Creek Ranch in Lincoln County.
“The actual aim is to facilitate closing feedgrounds and to create a mannequin to indicate ranchers who’ve properties: Right here’s an choice the place you will get paid,” Knoblach Household Basis director Steve Sharkey informed Wyofile.
An elk occupancy settlement is a voluntary short-term habitat lease designed to enhance tolerance for ranging elk on personal land. Ranchers who permit elk to winter on personal lands obtain financial compensation to cowl the price of cattle relocation, feeding bills, and infrastructure modifications comparable to let-down fences, which may be laid down to permit elk to maneuver freely. The Wyoming Recreation and Fish Division helps the agreements and has integrated them into the Wyoming Elk Feedground Management Plan.
“These voluntary agreements incentivize ranchers to supply essential, unobstructed habitat for elk and different wildlife on personal land whereas lowering competitors between elk and cattle, a win-win for wildlife and landowners,” the GYC says on its website.
One other facet of elk occupancy agreements is that they compensate ranchers for conserving their livestock out of areas that WGFD identifies as “essential winter vary” for large sport. This permits elk to browse their means by way of the robust winter months with out competitors from cattle, whereas additionally retains home cattle from intermingling with brucellosis-infected elk.
Wyoming is the one state with an elk feedground program, and wildlife managers have relied on them to assist elk survive harsh winters since 1912. WGFD at present operates over 20 feedgrounds that serve roughly 20,000 elk within the western a part of the state.
These state-run feedlots present supplemental feed — sometimes alfalfa pellets or hay — when heavy snow cowl makes pure forage onerous to return by. Feedgrounds additionally assist maintain elk herds from invading personal lands, the place they’ll co-mingle with cattle and eat by way of a rancher’s grass and hay.
Whereas Wyoming’s feedground program is deeply embedded within the state’s method to elk administration, this system got here underneath heavy hearth when an grownup cow elk discovered useless on the Scab Creek feedground in December 2024 tested positive for CWD. Lifeless contaminated elk had been additionally discovered within the Dell Creek and Black Butte feedgrounds. CWD is all the time deadly and spreads rapidly in concentrated elk and deer populations
Paying ranchers to tolerate, and even welcome elk grazing on their property, isn’t a brand new concept within the West. One other Bozeman-based nonprofit, the Property and Environment Research Center, launched Montana’s “Elk Rent” program in November 2023. This system pays ranchers based mostly on the period and variety of elk on their property through the winter months. It makes use of path cameras and synthetic intelligence to trace elk and calculate payouts. Not like conservation easements, which completely limit land growth, “Elk Hire” affords landowners the flexibleness to reassess participation every season.
These packages are at present being funded by personal donors. Nonetheless, it could possibly be one other for elk administration in areas the place winter vary and cattle ranches coincide. WDFG’s elk feeding price taxpayers a whopping $3.1 million in 2022. If Wyoming may divert these funds from its feedground packages to native ranches, proponents say, it might be a win-win for wildlife and ranchers.
“The ranch has been with my household for nearly 100 years, and I need it to remain that means for one more 100,” Luke Lancaster, proprietor of Spring Creek Ranch, told GYC. “To not have to fret about elk in with cattle and a constructive brucellosis check is a big aid. This settlement actually secures the way forward for our ranch.”
In the meantime, some hunters really feel uneasy about such packages. The growth of the cash-for-wildlife-occupancy mannequin has involved hunters coping with an analogous program in Montana. Some are anxious public funds may be tapped for funds, and others are involved such funds would possibly incentivize landowners to harbor elk on their lands so as to qualify for extra cash funds.
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“We respect … modern makes an attempt to encourage private-land conservation, however we don’t imagine that wildlife tolerance essentially warrants financial compensation,” Jake Schwaller, board member of the Montana Chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, told OL last year. “The ‘Elk Hire’ pilot program is intriguing, however we query the scalability and fear concerning the precedent this may increasingly set.”
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