The Bridger-Teton National Forest has asked the Wyoming Game and Fish Department to change its management plans to prohibit killing wolves that are preying on elk gathered at forestland feedgrounds.
The request came as part of the Bridger-Teton’s decision to OK the continuation of an elk feeding operation on 91 acres up the Gros Ventre River drainage at Alkali Creek. An “implementation guideline” included in the forest’s final decision on the Alkali Creek Feedground expands a requirement to classify wolves as a “scavenger” that cannot be harassed or killed at all other “authorized feedgrounds on the Bridger-Teton.”
“It was intentional that it would apply to all feedgrounds on the forest,” Jackson District Ranger Dale Deiter said. “We ended up doing that for all of them because it related to the analysis that we did and the best science.”
The provision prohibiting killing wolves was anticipated at Alkali but not at all other forest feedgrounds. There are “seven or eight” feedgrounds on the Bridger-Teton, Deiter said.
Reclassification of wolves as a protected scavenger on feedgrounds stems from an Alkali Feedground objection filed by the Greater Yellowstone Coalition and Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance.
Bridger-Teton Supervisor Tricia O’Connor formalized the request in a Dec. 2 letter to Wyoming Game and Fish Department Director Scott Talbott.
New feedground plan bans anti-wolf efforts – Jackson Hole News&Guide: Environmental.