Elk Don't Need Vaccinations, Just a Home on the Range

by Meredith Taylor

The Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD) will vaccinate elk on the National Elk Refuge in Jackson, despite the fact that brucellosis vaccination contradicts current refuge management policies, which prioritize habitat improvement to reduce disease transmission and increase native habitat for healthy, free-ranging wildlife.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) authorized the WGFD to vaccinate calf and cow elk on the refuge with the ineffective Strain-19 brucellosis vaccine every winter for three years until the USFWS makes a decision on the ongoing Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the refuge and the Grand Teton National Park Bison and Elk Management Plan.

The USFWS approved the vaccination project in the face of almost unanimous opposition from refuge staff, individuals, organizations and scientists. (99% of public comments objected to the plan.)

This decision, driven by politics instead of science, makes a mockery of the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and defies the public's wishes.

Successful wildlife management requires adequate habitat for all free-ranging, healthy wildlife species, not vaccination on elk farms.

Studies document that elk wintering on the refuge and adjacent lands have lower brucellosis rates than elk concentrated on state feedgrounds. Even the WGFD has called feedgrounds "a recipe for disaster" because of the increased risks they pose to elk from chronic wasting disease, tuberculosis and pasturella pneumonia. In fact, the agency's own Environmental Assessment admits that "winter feeding in the Greater Yellowstone area sustains the high seroprevalence of brucellosis in elk." Ironically, to implement the vaccination decision during this mild winter, when the majority of elk had moved off the refuge to the open slopes of their native winter range, the animals had to be lured back in with feed to "condition" them for vaccination with bio-bullets.

A recent study conducted by brucellosis authority Dr. Tom Roffe concludes that Strain-19 vaccine offers little protection against brucellosis infection in elk and that the vaccine's protection is so small that it has little biological effect on disease eradication.

Strain-19 vaccine was developed for cattle, but is ineffective in wildlife. The WGFD's Environmental Assessment admits that "[t]he interim vaccination program on the Refuge would have negligible if any short term effects on protecting livestock from the potential transmission of brucellosis from elk and bison to livestock in Jackson Hole..." In fact, there have been no documented cases of elk infecting cattle with brucellosis under free-ranging natural conditions.

Teton County ranchers have successfully used Strain-19 vaccine on their cattle to prevent brucellosis. The most effective way to reduce the risk of brucellosis transmission is to vaccinate cattle, not wildlife.

One solution to the problem of feeding and vaccinating wildlife is offered by WOC's Restoring Wild Patterns Program, which would keep free-ranging wildlife on their remaining habitat and protect their traditional migration corridors. Where ancient migration routes are still being used by free-ranging elk on the Gros Ventre River and Spread Creek areas and in the Buffalo Valley north of Jackson, brucellosis rates are lower and calf survival is higher than on the refuge and other feedgrounds.

WOC supports The Wildlife Conservation Society's proposed designation of a National Migration Corridor from the southern Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem to the Green River Basin to provide habitat and maintain wildlife at carrying capacity.

This visionary plan would save public agencies millions of dollars in feed and vaccination costs each year, funds that could then be used for more habitat improvement and acquisition projects. This win-win proposition would help the WGFD and USFWS join forces to effectively reduce brucellosis by dispersing wildlife on all available habitat as has been accomplished in the Buffalo Valley. The valley, once an elk feedlot, is now winter range for healthy, free-ranging elk, bison, deer and moose, thanks to habitat improvement projects.

A National Migration Corridor would go a long way toward protecting Wyoming's treasured wildlife heritage.