Vern Evans
A nonprofit conservation organization is paying Wyoming cattle ranchers for hosting elk herds on their land. The initiative led by the Greater Yellowstone Coalition is billed as an effort to reduce the state’s reliance on elk feedgrounds, which can be breeding grounds for chronic wasting disease. Payments for wildlife tolerance are a move that’s becoming more common in the West and has wide appeal for landowners, but also gives some public hunters pause.
The Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Wyoming Fish and Game Department, and the Knobloch Family Foundation initiated the first “elk occupancy agreements” in 2019. The GYC manages two agreements in Teton County and recently added a new deal with Spring Creek Ranch in Lincoln County.
“The real goal is to facilitate closing feedgrounds and to create a model to show ranchers who have properties: Here’s an option where you can get paid,” Knoblach Family Foundation director Steve Sharkey told Wyofile.
An elk occupancy agreement is a voluntary short-term habitat lease designed to improve tolerance for ranging elk on private land. Ranchers who allow elk to winter on private lands receive monetary compensation to cover the cost of cattle relocation, feeding expenses, and infrastructure modifications such as let-down fences, which can be laid down to allow elk to move freely. The Wyoming Game and Fish Department supports the agreements and has incorporated them into the Wyoming Elk Feedground Management Plan.
“These voluntary agreements incentivize ranchers to provide crucial, unobstructed habitat for elk and other wildlife on private land while reducing competition between elk and cattle, a win-win for wildlife and landowners,” the GYC says on its website.
Another aspect of elk occupancy agreements is that they compensate ranchers for keeping their livestock out of areas that WGFD identifies as “crucial winter range” for big game. This allows elk to browse their way through the tough winter months without competition from cattle, while also keeps domestic cattle from intermingling with brucellosis-infected elk.
Wyoming is the only state with an elk feedground program, and wildlife managers have relied on them to help elk survive harsh winters since 1912. WGFD currently operates over 20 feedgrounds that serve approximately 20,000 elk in the western part of the state.
These state-run feedlots provide supplemental feed — typically alfalfa pellets or hay — when heavy snow cover makes natural forage hard to come by. Feedgrounds also help keep elk herds from invading private lands, where they can co-mingle with cattle and eat through a rancher’s grass and hay.
While Wyoming’s feedground program is deeply embedded in the state’s approach to elk management, the program came under heavy fire when an adult cow elk found dead on the Scab Creek feedground in December 2024 tested positive for CWD. Dead infected elk were also found in the Dell Creek and Black Butte feedgrounds. CWD is always fatal and spreads quickly in concentrated elk and deer populations
Paying ranchers to tolerate, or even welcome elk grazing on their property, isn’t a new idea in the West. Another Bozeman-based nonprofit, the Property and Environment Research Center, launched Montana’s “Elk Rent” program in November 2023. The program pays ranchers based on the duration and number of elk on their property during the winter months. It uses trail cameras and artificial intelligence to track elk and calculate payouts. Unlike conservation easements, which permanently restrict land development, “Elk Rent” offers landowners the flexibility to reassess participation each season.
These programs are currently being funded by private donors. Still, it could be another for elk management in areas where winter range and cattle ranches coincide. WDFG’s elk feeding cost taxpayers a whopping $3.1 million in 2022. If Wyoming could divert those funds from its feedground programs to local ranches, proponents say, it would be a win-win for wildlife and ranchers.
“The ranch has been with my family for almost 100 years, and I want it to stay that way for another 100,” Luke Lancaster, owner of Spring Creek Ranch, told GYC. “To not have to worry about elk in with cattle and a positive brucellosis test is a huge relief. This agreement really secures the future of our ranch.”
Meanwhile, some hunters feel uneasy about such programs. The expansion of the cash-for-wildlife-occupancy model has concerned hunters dealing with a similar program in Montana. Some are worried public funds might be tapped for payments, and others are concerned such payments might incentivize landowners to harbor elk on their lands in order to qualify for more cash payments.
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“We appreciate … innovative attempts to encourage private-land conservation, but we don’t believe that wildlife tolerance necessarily warrants monetary compensation,” Jake Schwaller, board member of the Montana Chapter of Backcountry Hunters & Anglers, told OL last year. “The ‘Elk Rent’ pilot program is intriguing, but we question the scalability and worry about the precedent this may set.”
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