Researchers with the agency are undertaking a long-term study of chronic wasting disease in an elk population.

Department officials warn the data is too preliminary for any definitive conclusions.

But conservationists say the preliminary conclusion released by the agency indicates more of a potential rationalization for maintaining state elk feedgrounds rather than sound science.

The feedgrounds are a hot topic for debate in Wyoming because ranchers and outfitters generally support the feedgrounds because they keep elk away from cattle and help them survive the winter. But conservationists say the feedgrounds should be phased out because they increase the risk of spreading disease.

The general belief among most conservationists and some wildlife biologists is that if chronic wasting disease were to spread to feedgrounds, it would devastate elk populations because they are artificially concentrated on feed lines in the winter.

Franz Camenzind, a wildlife biologist and head of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, said Game and Fish Department officials are being "irresponsible," and he called their suppositions about the effects of the disease "naive."

"They had a 77.5 percent death rate in five or six years, and from that they're concluding that it appears the elk in this study would maintain a stable or increasing population," Camenzind said. "I just find that an amazingly simplified conclusion."

Chronic wasting disease is caused by a mutated protein, or prion, that is somehow ingested by deer, elk and moose, but scientists don't know yet exactly how it is transmitted.

The disease has so far proven to be always fatal for animals.

It can take years for a deer or elk with the disease to finally die from it. Its most typical symptom is chronic weight loss leading to death by starvation.

The prion that causes the disease is not a living organism and cannot be killed, as far as scientists know, and it can remain in soil and an environment for many years.

Scientists with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department have been studying elk since 2002 at the state Wildlife Research Center at Sybille.

Eric Keszler, department spokesman, said this ongoing research will ultimately help scientists understand more about a disease that they are still struggling to figure out. Relatively little is known about chronic wasting disease now, he said.

Keszler said most, if not all, test elk and deer housed at the Sybille center eventually contract the disease. Of the original 40 elk, 31 have died so far, all from the disease, Keszler said.

However, most of the elk had one or more calves before perishing, and researchers used this data to estimate future population changes for this group.

Terry Kreeger, veterinary services supervisor for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, said in a department media release that the disease did not cause a decline in the particular research population, and it didn't hinder its growth, either.

"Accounting for calf production and recruitment and using simple life-table analysis, we estimate there would have been a 47 percent increase in this population," Kreeger said. "That is, there would be 59 elk surviving today from the original population of 40."

Kreeger warned, however, that the findings are preliminary and it would be speculative at this point to try to extrapolate these findings to any wild elk populations.

Once all of the elk from the original study have died, researchers will use data from wild elk populations to account for additional factors such as predation, hunting and calf survival to model what effects chronic wasting disease would have on elk that use state or federal feedgrounds, where the animals are artificially concentrated during the winter, Keszler said.

But Camenzind indicated the release of the preliminary findings is at least misleading and is possibly irresponsible.

"They're dismissing the impact on hunting, the environment, on other species, and they're basically saying because they live long enough to breed, the mortality rate will not cause a precipitous decline in the elk numbers," Camenzind said. "I find that hard to believe."

The Game and Fish Department's goal should be to eliminate feedgrounds before the disease spreads to the elk that use them, he said, to ensure the infection rate stays in the range of 3 percent to 5 percent of the population, as is normal for "free-ranging" elk.