JACKSON (WNE) — The Wyoming Game and Fish Department has detected chronic wasting disease on the Muddy Creek feedground for the first time.

Muddy Creek, which is south of Pinedale, is one of three feedgrounds that serves the roughly 2,000-animal Pinedale Elk Herd. Biologists have already detected CWD at the Scab Creek feedground, which also serves the herd.

Muddy Creek is the fifth CWD-positive feedground in Wyoming.

Last year, Game and Fish detected the always fatal, highly transmissible neurological disease on four feedgrounds, beginning with Scab Creek. Muddy Creek and Scab Creek are within Hunt Area 98, where biologists first detected CWD in 2021, according to a Game and Fish press release.

Wildlife managers detected the recent Muddy Creek case in a sample collected during a search for elk skulls with “viable brain material” at the feedground after the feeding season concluded, according to the department’s announcement.

It was unclear by press time Thursday whether wildlife managers fed elk on the feedground this winter. As of mid-February, the department was not feeding at Muddy Creek, due to mild winter conditions. Game and Fish did not respond to a request for comment by press time.

Muddy Creek is the southernmost feedground in the Pinedale Elk Herd, located on U.S. Forest Service land. The site is “relatively small and challenging due to its proximity to several livestock operations,” according to the department’s February 2026 feedground management action plan for the herd.

The plan was crafted to limit disease transmission while providing supplemental feed, as well as to reduce reliance of elk on supplemental feed.

To meet those goals, the Pinedale wildlife managers would like to expand feeding areas; find landowners interested in allowing elk to winter on their property; increase CWD testing; and purchase an incinerator to dispose of elk carcasses.