The Idaho Fish and Game Commission, the body of citizens appointed to set the rules the Department administers, has adopted the following policy statement:

The test of any policy is whether it works. Those who doubt the effectiveness of a virtual "hands off" rule might consider that Idaho's huge wilderness areas, where almost no one goes in winter, sustain some of the largest and healthiest herds of elk and deer in the country. Those herds have survived winter after winter without human help.

In those few areas where Idaho Fish and Game has long-established winter feeding programs, human development forced the issue. Such places include the Wood River Valley, Garden Valley and Featherville, where critical historic winter ranges have been replaced by homes, and on the Idaho-Utah border, where construction of the Interstate highway blocked the annual deer migration. Winter feeding was chosen over the potential loss of important herds, and those areas are exceptions to the rule.

Hunters pay the costs of feeding, when it must be done. Funding comes through a $.75 surcharge on deer, elk and pronghorn hunting tags. That money is held in a special account to be used for winter feeding and winter range improvement programs only. An advisory committee of five members in each winter feeding district meets whenever appropriate to give advice and recommendations on the administration of winter feeding programs and act as a liaison between the commission, the department, interest groups, and the public on winter feeding issues.

In addition to buying feed, the $.75 surcharge is used to improve winter range. By far, improving winter range is the most cost efficient and effective way to help wild animals survive winter. Winter range improvement projects include planting more than 200,000 bitterbrush plants annually, revitalizing Conservation Reserve Program lands, and reseeding important winter forage species after burns. Fish and Game will continue to prioritize available funding for winter range improvement.

Problems With Feeding
Feeding is not the simple act of kindness many people see it to be and can, in fact, be a great detriment to the welfare of animals for several reasons. Among the reasons Fish and Game considers it a last resort are these:

• Health problems, including eye and respiratory infections, are frequent in the herds concentrated around feed sites. The change from natural to supplemental feeding also often causes scours (diarrhea) in fawns. Reproduction in some herds that are fed every winter – such as the Jackson, Wyoming, elk herd – is dramatically lower than it is in Idaho's herds, at least partly because of communicable disease. Idaho's big game animals are healthy, and game managers want to keep them that way.
• Depredation on nearby private lands has been caused by establishing feeding sites in some areas. Big game animals concentrate on the sites and their numbers tend to increase each year.
• Concentrating game animals at feed sites makes survival of the fittest even more a factor than it is under natural conditions. Intense competition for food in limited space has been seen to cause a higher death rate in fawns and calves than where herds were more scattered under natural winter conditions.
• Range damage occurs in the areas around feeding sites because animals continue to eat natural plants even when they are being fed. Where supplemental feeding takes place year after year, natural winter range vegetation can be overused and may never recover.
• Difficulty adapting to man-provided feeds is a problem for big game animals even though Fish and Game has learned to dispense high-protein diary grade hay for elk and a special multi-ingredient pellet food for deer. Wild animals are accustomed to wild range vegetation and need the variety in their diets.
• Expense is extremely high in feeding operations in comparison to the relatively few animals it may help. During the 2001-2002 winter the cost to feed less than 1 percent of the state's elk and deer was nearly $450,000.
• Starvation happens primarily to animals that enter the winter in poor body condition, according to careful biological studies. Deer research has shown that animals in good condition can survive the winter with very little feed. Supplemental feeding is virtually irrelevant to survival.

In addition to these reasons for making cautious decisions about feeding, Fish and Game does not want to promote the misunderstanding that winter feeding can be an adequate way to make up for human actions resulting in the loss of natural winter habitat. No substitute for complete, healthy, four-season habitat exists.