Jackson Wyoming Information - American Serengeti

Have you heard of the American Serengeti?

The migration of herd animals on the Serengeti Plain of Kenya and Tanzania is one of the world's great natural events. The great migrations of the Arctic's caribou herds is another, but we have one of our own here in the Jackson Hole country.

In the fall the elk herds of the southern Yellowstone Park, the Teton Wilderness and the Teton National park, as well as elk from the surrounding national forests, are driven from the high country by the lowering snows of winter. In the springtime, when the deep snows have melted to occasional patches in the lowlands while still mantling the mountains, the elk start moving back toward the high country.

When I lived in the small town of Kelly, just north of Jackson Hole, I was driving to town one early winter morning. Suddenly, I found myself moving into a mass of spectral animals and realized that I had driven into a group of more than a thousand elk which were taking advantage of the dark to make their ritual return to the valleys from the high and snow-laden mountains. This migration probably dates to the days when the glaciers made their final retreat from Jackson Hole, about 10,000 years ago, and there I was in the midst of that ancient pattern of natural history. It was one of those epiphanic moments that one doesn't forget readily.

In ancient days elk and other animals, such as antelope, moved out of the Yellowstone country and many wintered in our valley while others migrated up the Gros Ventre and Hoback rivers to spend the snowy months on the salt sage plains further to the east. In the earliest days of the white man the herd was estimated to be more than 25,000 animals and they needed large wintering grounds to survive. The salt sage country became prime ranching country in the 1800s and stockmen wintered their own animals there, including my grandfather and his brothers. That competition soon cut back the migration routes until the ancestral wintering grounds to the east were forgotten by the younger generations of Yellowstone and Teton elk. The Gros Ventre area and Jackson Hole proper soon became the prime wintering habitat for the animals, but that country was also being homesteaded and broken up into a patchwork of fenced pastures. The homesteaders defended the hay they had put up in the summer, often spending bitter nights wrapped in blankets and shooting the desperate animals whose forage the men now claimed as their own. The situation became completely unacceptable in the hard winter of 1911 when a conservative estimate of 2,500 elk died for lack of food, including nearly 75 percent of the calves.

That sad event galvanized the residents of Jackson Hole and inspired them to gain congress's attention to the plight of the animals. Money was budgeted for the purchase of pasture and 1,760 acres were bought from private owners to join with a thousand acres of federal land. That beginning eventually resulted in almost 25,000 acres of prime winter pasture being designated as the National Elk Refuge. Three other, much smaller, areas in the Gros Ventre have been designated as closed areas for the feeding of elk during the winter.

By the 1930s the elk populations began to stabilize and the Wyoming Game and Fish, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other interested agencies began to cooperate on finding a number of animals which could be managed effectively. The optimal population of the present herd in Jackson Hole has been set at 11,029: 7,500 to be maintained on the refuge, 2,400 on the feed grounds in the Gros Ventre, and 1,129 on native winter ranges located on federal and private lands. That population has fluctuated between about 11,000 and 15,000 animals. The larger numbers were the result of several mild winters and many elk spending their whole lives on park lands where hunting is minimal.

One of the recent joys of living in Jackson has been the fact that, a few years ago, several magnificent bull elk chose the western margin of the refuge, near the main highway to Yellowstone, as their permanent winter pasture. Today almost a hundred six-point bulls are easily observed by Looky-Lous driving by, or the approximately 35,000 smart people who book a ride on the sleighs run by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service out of The National Museum of Wildlife Art, three miles north of town.

For more info, write to the National Elk Refuge at P.O. Box C in Jackson, WY 83001. If you want to put on your long handles and toasty boots and see the elk up close, phone 307.733-5386.

If you are really interested in contributing to the welfare of the magnificent wapiti join the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation by calling 1-800-CALL ELK. I'd like to thank them for their help in putting this column together.

-Jon Horton