Utah officials secretly shot 170 elk on church-owned desert land

In January and February, officials with the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources shot 170 elk in the Deseret Cooperative Wildlife Management Unit, which is located within the Morgan-South Rich Hunting Unit and is owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. The DWR says it was necessary because of an overpopulation of elk in the area, but the agency had previously tried to keep the operation secret, according to The Salt Lake Tribunewhich broke the news about the operation on Tuesday.

The Tribune The reporting was based in part on public documents showing that state wildlife officials were concerned about how public hunters might view the cull since they were not invited to participate. This included emails and other communications between state officials, including DWR biologist Xaela Walden, who oversaw the operation and wrote to agency officials on Feb. 20, “The media and social media are thankfully still relatively quiet.”

Rather than allow the public to harvest some of the surplus elk population, DWR staff worked with private contractors to lure and kill more than 150 elk at the Deseret CWMU using silencers and walk-in traps. They slaughtered the elk on the spot after testing each animal for CWD and brucellosis — none of the elk tested positive for either disease — and ended up with about 39,000 pounds of elk meat to donate. In total, the operation cost the agency more than $53,000, according to The Tribuneexcluding costs for employee time, equipment and fuel.

The Tribune called the operation “probably the largest wildlife euthanization project the state has ever undertaken.”

Utah DWR spokeswoman Faith Heaton Jolley says she can’t confirm that claim. Jolley explains that the DWR conducted several large culling operations in the 1980s that targeted deer herds in agricultural areas, but that records of those culling operations are no longer available.

“We can’t confirm whether this is the largest eradication operation ever,” Jolley said. Outdoor living in an email. “This strategy is typically used to limit large game agricultural depredations. It is unclear if this many animals have been removed at once before, but we are hopeful that this management measure — combined with hunting and additional tools in the recently updated CWMU rule — will be effective in maintaining the elk population in this unit to within the population goal.”

Speaking about those population goals, Jolley said the Morgan-South Rich hunt unit that includes the Deseret CWMU had an elk population of about 7,000 animals in the fall of 2023. This exceeded the unit’s biological carrying capacity (or the number of elk the land could support) and was well above the DWR’s population goal of 4,200 elk. In addition to overgrazing, DWR biologists have blamed the overpopulated elk herd for the decline of mule deer in the unit by competing with the deer for resources.

“As a result, we removed a total of 170 elk from the Deseret Land & Livestock CWMU,” Jolley said. “The elk meat was donated to members of the public through local shelters, food banks, and people on our venison donation list.”

This level of coordination was possible because the Deseret CWMU, like all CWMUs in the state, is privately owned but managed in partnership with the state of Utah. These CWMU programs are a unique type of public-private land partnership that offers landowners vouchers for big game tags, which they can then sell to hunters; as part of that exchange, the DWR requires that landowners provide hunting opportunities to the public that are “comparable to private hunts.”

As for those public hunting opportunities, the DWR decided that inviting public hunters to help with the kill wouldn’t be as effective or efficient as using private contractors. And Jolley says it was too late for the agency to increase the number of elk tags or start new hunts in the unit when it created the plan in the fall of 2023. So the DWR issued a certificate of registration that allowed the killing of up to 300 elk.

Read more: Montana judge says landowners do not have ‘absolute freedom’ to kill elk, and allowing public hunting does not violate their rights

“DWR chose to issue a COR,” Jolley said, “because it was within current law and policy, could be implemented immediately, had the potential to achieve sufficient reductions in the elk population, and still provided a public benefit through meat donations.”

Looking ahead to next year, Jolley explains that there should be more hunting opportunities for the public on Deseret and the other four CWMUs in the Morgan-South Rich hunting unit. In the time since the cull last winter, the DWR has proposed a new rule that will issue additional cow permits to hunters who already have an existing CWMU permit. Jolley says The DWR has also set a new harvest target of 300 elk for the Deseret CWMU for the 2025 hunting season, and that the DWR will work with both land managers and public hunters to achieve that number.

“Resources that provide the public with the opportunity to harvest elk are prioritized. If targets are not met after public hunters have had the opportunity to harvest, the CWMUs are responsible for meeting their targets and the meat from animals removed by the CWMUs is donated to the public,” Jolley said. “CWMUs that do not meet targets are reviewed by the CWMU Advisory Committee and may be placed on probation, removed from the program, or face other disciplinary action.”