Background: On January 10th, 2013, the FWP Commission passed the Elk Management Guidelines In Areas With Brucellosis Working Group Proposed Final Recommendations. This whole program is existing outside of Montana law and scientific wildlife management. The program has not even been following what was passed in the Proposed Recommendations, but is a law to itself - hence the lawsuit.

Within the Proposed Recommendations - Fundamental Objective #2 stated: Maximize acceptability of elk management tools and populations in the DSA for:
Sportspersons (measure with satisfaction survey),
Wildlife enthusiasts (measure with satisfaction survey),
Landowners (measure with satisfaction survey), and
Livestock producers (measure with satisfaction survey).

Yet, FWP elk brucellosis management actions have not maximized acceptability. Instead, the more awareness of the situation has caused increased public comments against the program, many upset hunters going to Helena to speak to the FWP Commissioners at the April 10th meeting, a lawsuit, even public statements and public comments from some of the Statewide Elk Brucellosis Working Group Members.

Now FWP has issued a survey (Aug. 2014), 3 versions: catering to general Montana resident, landowner and hunters. I was alerted to this survey through a friend who knew my work concerning this program. I then requested the watermarked surveys from FWP which I converted to pdf's for the public (documents below).

Here's the thing, the presentations that FWP administrators from Helena put on when embarking on this program were not only created using parts of a Department of Livestock presentation and very slanted towards livestock interests, but FWP has never done independent research into the claim by DOL that elk (they used to blame wild bison without any evidence) in Montana are the reason for the cattle infections. Yet, independent investigations are turning up evidence that the bulk, if not all of the cattle infection cases, have been cattle to cattle transmission and one case of a domestic bison in 2011 was from an RB51 vaccine infection, not elk (infection timeline and documentation page being set up). DOL has been obstructing public information requests for over 8 months now, involving the cattle infection cases.

FWP administrators do not share the truth of these situations and their elk brucellosis management program, so how can they accurately conduct a survey to access acceptability? The survey language is leading and a number of the questions should concern conservation hunters that are quickly loosing scientific wildlife management, govenmental transparency and accountability with the Helena FWP administrators of this elk brucellosis program and the FWP Commission.

Elk Brucellosis General Household Survey

Elk Brucellosis Hunter Survey

Elk Brucellosis Private Landowner Survey