Harsh winter decimates wildlife

CASPER – It’s been a long, tough winter for Wyoming’s wildlife — especially near Pinedale, where unusually deep snow, very cold temperatures and an outbreak of a rare disease in the local pronghorn herd have decimated pronghorn and mule deer populations. 
 
Gov. Mark Gordon and the Wyoming Game and Fish Department convened a town hall on Thursday at the Pinedale Library to discuss the toll. Concerned Wyomingites packed the room and filled the Zoom call to capacity. 
 
“This winter has been the toughest winter in a very long time,” Gordon said at the start of the meeting. 
 
“What we need to do,” he added, “is have people come together, as we are right now, talking about — what are the things we can do on the ground, in place, that make the most sense?” 
 
The numbers presented during the town hall were stark: About half of the 83 adult female pronghorn and one-third of the 128 adult female mule deer collared by the Game and Fish Department have succumbed to the harsh conditions, compared to a winter average of around 20%. 
 
Nearly all of the collared juvenile mule deer have also died, and more losses are expected before the cold lets up. 
 
“Right now, we’re dipping down to about 10% of our fawns that are still alive,” said Kevin Monteith, a professor of natural resource science at the University of Wyoming, during the town hall. “I hope we don’t lose them all. But we’re basically going to be missing this entire cohort.” 
 
Meanwhile, an estimated 500 pronghorn have now died from the bacterial pneumonia first detected in the herd earlier this winter. Officials won’t be sure of the toll until the snow melts, but if their numbers are accurate, it’ll mark the deadliest outbreak of Mycoplasma bovis ever documented in a Wyoming pronghorn herd. 
 

 
The Pinedale community had a lot of questions for Gordon, Monteith and Brian Nesvik, director of the Game and Fish Department. Why hadn’t the agency acted sooner to prevent so much mortality? Was there anything it could do to avoid even more deaths? Would the hunting seasons have to be curtailed? 
 
“My position is we need to start coming up with solutions, not catastrophe management,” one frustrated resident said. 
 
Attendees proposed a range of possible remedies, such as emergency feeding or plowing snow to help wildlife reach the plants underneath. 
 
Nesvik and Monteith responded to many by explaining why state wildlife managers had ultimately decided against them. Mule deer have a harder time adjusting to dietary changes compared with elk, making emergency feeding more risky. Plowing the fragile sagebrush ecosystem can cause damage that lasts for years. Hunting probably will have to be restricted this year, Nesvik said, but it’s too early to say how significant the changes will be. 
 
“We haven’t set the seasons for next year, and this is still ongoing,” he said. “This situation is continuing today. And so we are continuing to monitor that right up until the point at which we go to our commission meeting and set seasons.” 
 
Linda Baker, director of the Upper Green River Alliance, called on the speakers — and the state — to take more action to preserve the habitat and migration corridors used by pronghorn and mule deer. 
 
“It all comes down to habitat, maintaining and protecting quality habitat, and protecting pronghorns’ ability to get to the food and shelter they need to survive,” Baker said. 
 
Several other participants also urged such long-term actions during the hour-and-a-half-long event. The speakers agreed. 
 
On that front, “we obviously need to do more,” Gordon said. 
 
He expressed confidence that there’s plenty of momentum, not only in Pinedale but around the state, to do so.
 
This story was published on April 1, 2023.