Emaciated animals are continuing to die at the Dell Creek Feedground, which may prove to be an unwelcome testbed illustrating how always-deadly chronic wasting disease propagates through elk herds when they’re tightly congregated over hay for months at a time.
Two weeks ago, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department sent word that its second and third cases of CWD had been discovered on an elk feedground — both detected in cow carcasses at the Dell Creek Feedground in the Bondurant area. Those cases were labeled “absolutely concerning,” and already more dead elk have been found there carrying the prion disease.
“At Dell [Creek], with the continual animals that are being found dead, it looks like we’re probably further along in the epidemic cycle,” Wyoming State Wildlife Veterinarian Sam Allen told WyoFile.
To date, she said, no more CWD-infected elk have been discovered at the Pinedale-area Scab Creek Feedground — site of the first confirmed case of the disease on a feedground.
But at the confined Dell Creek feeding area in the Hoback Basin, the diseased carcasses are clearly accumulating. A 5-year-old cow suspected killed by the disease was discovered on Saturday, the state vet said. Its remains had been too consumed to test. Then on Sunday, a bull estimated at 3 years old was found dead. On Tuesday, Allen’s colleagues at the Wyoming Wildlife Health Laboratory confirmed the bull, which was noticeably thin, tested positive for CWD, a disease that U.S. Geological Survey modeling predicts will collapse Wyoming’s fed elk populations.
There’s reason to believe prevalence may soon skyrocket. Chronic wasting disease, Allen said, doesn’t usually increase “on a curve.”
“Most of the time it just goes straight up,” she said. “I would expect [prevalence] in this population to go a little bit faster than in some of our other elk populations, considering how feedgrounds are set up.”
The age of the infected animals is notable, said Justin Binfet, Game and Fish’s deputy chief of wildlife. There’s no way to know for certain that the degenerative neurological disease killed the 3-year-old bull directly — because its death could be from something else — but the possibility is “really problematic,” he said. That would suggest the animal contracted CWD when it was just a calf.
“That shows you the transmission potential may be elevated,” Binfet said. “At lower prevalence, in general, you don’t see a lot of CWD in younger age class animals. But as prevalence gets more and more substantial and the herds are further along that epidemic curve, then you tend to see more cases in younger animals.”
This didn’t happen this spring. It’s been incubating for two years, and now we’re just starting to receive the results.”
Hank edwards
Wildlife disease experts can deduce a lot from three, potentially four CWD-positive elk occurring within the same small piece of terrain in a region where disease otherwise exists at trace levels. It’s an adequate sample size to make educated guesses about what’s going on, said Hank Edwards, a longtime Wildlife Health Laboratory supervisor who retired in 2023.
“If these elk are dying — or at least circling the drain — right now, they were infected over two years ago,” Edwards said. “That means that the horse is long out of the barn. This didn’t happen this spring. It’s been incubating for two years, and now we’re just starting to receive the results.”
‘Very worrisome’
The accumulation of chronic wasting disease prions and the possibility of fast-rising prevalence at the Dell Creek Feedground specifically is “very worrisome,” Edwards said. Prions can bind with soil and grass and live in the environment for years.
“Those elk are in such tight proximity to one another,” he said. “It’s an extremely dense, crowded feedground just because of the topography.”
The 32.5-acre state-run site is located on the Bridger-Teton National Forest, and operates under a disputed permit. Bondurant often maintains a deep snowpack well into the spring, and right across the road from the Dell Creek Feedground is a cattle ranch: the Little Jennie. That combination creates a high likelihood of elk causing damage to private ranchland and intermingling with cattle, which can and has led to brucellosis outbreaks in Bondurant livestock.
Essentially, wildlife managers don’t have many responses at their disposal to stem the disease in the short term.
“We’re kind of stuck,” said Brandon Scurlock, Game and Fish’s Pinedale regional wildlife coordinator. “A few of those ranches around Dell Creek have had brucella, and so we have to be sensitive to that.”
As the CWD epidemic has ramped up, Game and Fish staff have held internal meetings to review what can be done. One measure is “staying on top of carcasses,” Scurlock said.
“We’ll try to get those prions off the feedgrounds as fast as we can,” he said. “We can euthanize any obviously symptomatic elk, because we don’t want them shedding prions. That’s what we can do right now — and that’s what’s what we are doing.”
Limited options
Longer term, wildlife managers can make more wholesale changes to the feeding regime at Dell Creek — or any other feedground. Adjustments, however, will have to be agreed to by ranchers, outfitters and other historic feeding proponents, because Game and Fish’s feedground management plan requires building consensus. The governor, because of intervention from the Wyoming Legislature, must sign off on any closures.
Game and Fish can also adjust its herd objectives and hunting seasons in response to the disease. The Dell Creek Feedground, which hosted just over 400 elk this winter, falls within the Upper Green River Elk Herd.
The early-stage CWD epidemic, Scurlock said, “will be a part of the conversations.”
Although changes that could limit the worst effects of CWD may face political headwinds, Allen, the state vet, struck an optimistic tone.
“My hope is that … we’re going to rally and go forward and do the right thing,” she said. “I think Wyoming is capable of that. Time will tell.”
It’s not prudent, Edwards said, to wait and see what happens on the Dell Creek Feedground under the status quo. That being said, Game and Fish is in a “tough” spot, he said.
“If you stop feeding, those elk are going to disperse and they’re infected — so they’re going to bring this disease with them,” Edwards said. “But that’s going to happen in the spring regardless. They’re going to leave that feedground.”
When that happens, he said, the CWD-positive cluster of elk from the Dell Creek Feedground are bound to intermingle with other elk herds, or with mule deer or moose.
“It’s a serious worry that these elk are going to further spread this disease across western Wyoming,” Edwards said.
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