Of course, trends in moose populations are also affected by some of these same variables. Some local moose populations, relatively recent arrivals to Wyoming in fact, may indeed be stabilizing or even slightly trending down. Many factors contribute to big game survival rates. Studies indicate that herbivory by large populations of elk on aspen and willow communities, coupled with historic lack of a needed wildfire regime, probably plays a part in lower moose numbers and depresses other wildlife species populations like songbirds and beaver as well. The same thing likely happens here in Jackson Hole.
Diseases affect elk populations.
Our elk in western Wyoming are probably sicker than any elk herds outside a research facility or game farm in North America. Our elk are susceptible to these and more. Most likely because we cluster most of them together here in the western part of our state and feed them during the winter, building the herds up to what arguably are unsustainable levels. Nowhere else in North America is this done on such a scale. Allowing the elk to spread out across the landscape and use their ancestral winter ranges and migration routes like the pronghorn and mule deer would go far to alleviating these problems.