As disease threatens feedground elk, Wyoming mired in planning and consensus-seeking

For the first time in its history, the Wyoming Game and Fish Department has a formal plan in place for managing the state’s 21 winter elk feedgrounds. 

The 96-page document allows for changes to feedgrounds that could avert the worst consequences of an ugly disease that’s ramping up — a sickness that scientists expect will devastate Northwest Wyoming’s six fed elk herds in the long term if feeding continues. Notably, the plan does not compel reform or call for closing feedgrounds, but it does open the door for wholesale changes to the system of feeding elk that’s been in place for a century.