Game and Fish to implement emergency feeding of elk due to fire impacts

SHERIDAN, Wyo. — The Wyoming Game and Fish Department will implement emergency feeding of elk in the northern Bighorn Mountains in response to late-season winter range impacts from the Elk Fire. The feeding operation will be short term and only in targeted areas.

The Elk Fire burned almost 100,000 acres of the eastern flank of the Bighorns during late September and October, including on the Amsden Creek and Kerns wildlife habitat management areas. Approximately 85% of Amsden Creek and 65% of Kerns were burned.

Emergency feeding of elk will take place on these properties to provide supplemental forage to reduce movement of elk onto adjoining private agricultural lands. Weather conditions and elk distribution will dictate when and where feeding starts. Feeding will only take place during the 2024–25 winter, not extending into future years.

“This decision was made due to extenuating circumstances and after extensive evaluation of the properties by local wildlife managers,” Sheridan Region Wildlife Supervisor Dustin Shorma said. “Because the Elk Fire burned late in the season, there was no time for any significant regrowth of vegetation prior to winter. This creates high potential for conflict as elk seek to winter elsewhere, potentially overwhelming adjacent private lands that either did not burn or also experienced some loss of vegetation that they need to conserve for their livestock operations.”

Amsden Creek and Kerns WHMAs are two of the oldest Game and Fish Commission–owned properties in the state. Initial parcel purchases began in 1944 and 1949, respectively, to protect traditional elk winter range.

Depending on the year and weather conditions, 350–400 elk winter on Amsden Creek WHMA and close to 800 elk winter on Kerns WHMA. These properties have been managed to maximize big game habitat for decades, by conducting habitat improvement projects, treating invasive annual grasses and noxious weeds and irrigating meadows to improve forage.

Both WHMAs were closed throughout most of October due to public safety concerns, but were reopened to public access on Oct. 30 in conjunction with the lifting of the USFS public access closure.

Amsden Creek and Kerns will adhere to the annual seasonal closures that have been in effect for decades to protect wintering wildlife from disturbance. Both properties are closing to human presence on Nov. 16. Amsden Creek will reopen on May 15, 2025, and Kerns will reopen on June 1, 2025.

Mule deer are not targeted for emergency feeding. Mule deer have a specialized digestive system that does not process hay as efficiently as elk, meaning it can have detrimental impacts on their health. Additionally, GPS data from the ongoing North Bighorns Mule Deer Monitoring Project show that while there are some resident mule deer on the eastern Bighorns, many mule deer that summer in the Bighorns move to the west side of the mountains during winter. Mule deer that do winter on the east side of the Bighorns tend to winter further out on the foothills and plains, which were not impacted by the fire.

Short-term emergency feeding of elk has taken place in recent years in other parts of Wyoming, including most recently in the 2022–23 winter in the western part of the state in response to unusually high amounts of snow cover.