I dont know about you guys but this one really rubs me the wrong way.
Give your oppions and ideas to the solution. Mine is man has interfeared far to much and now we are going to sacrafice game animals to appease the cattle industry and spend millions in tax dollars come on.
Refuge manager critical of elk test and slaughter plan
Associated Press
JACKSON, Wyo. - A proposal to test and slaughter brucellosis-carrying elk is unethical and destined to fail, says National Elk Refuge Manager Barry Reiswig.
It is among a long list of recommendations for controlling the disease that the Wyoming Brucellosis Coordination Team plans to present to Gov. Dave Freudenthal next month.
The 19-member team finalized the list during a meeting Dec. 15 in Lander.
While Reiswig supports some of the recommendations, he said he can not imagine a worse strategy for managing brucellosis than test-and-slaughter. "It's another Band-Aid solution that's not going to solve the problem," he said.
The recommendation calls for starting a pilot program at a state elk feedground in the Pinedale area. That would entail building a five-mile fence and 8-foot-tall corral so elk could be captured, run through a chute and tested for exposure to brucellosis.
If successful, the program would need to be expanded to all 23 elk feedgrounds in northwestern Wyoming to be effective. Eventually, the federally run National Elk Refuge in Jackson Hole would also need to be involved.
Reiswig called it a "ridiculously expensive" experiment. "Do you have to drive a car off a cliff to realize you're going to be in a wreck when you hit the bottom?" he asked.
Brucellosis spreads to cattle and causes them to abort their calves. The disease turned up in a cattle herd in the Pinedale area a year ago and has since been detected - apparently due to stepped-up testing - in other herds in Wyoming.
The cases have cost Wyoming its federal brucellosis-free status and resulted in new restrictions and testing requirements before Wyoming cattle can be sold to other states.
It is believed that the elk feedgrounds encourage the disease by artificially concentrating elk. Elk which do not frequent feedgrounds are less likely to carry brucellosis.
Some coordination team experts say test-and-slaughter would only be worth the political and economic costs if feedgrounds were phased out once disease rates were lowered. Otherwise brucellosis could only re-emerge later, they say.
Reiswig believes it would be unethical to manage elk in a way to perpetuate brucellosis, then turn around and kill the elk which carry the disease.
Also, he predicted that crews would need helicopters to successfully round up elk on the 25,000-acre National Elk Refuge.
He wondered how the public would feel about winter range restrictions knowing that the Game and Fish Department was chasing, capturing, testing and slaughtering wildlife during the winter.
Give your oppions and ideas to the solution. Mine is man has interfeared far to much and now we are going to sacrafice game animals to appease the cattle industry and spend millions in tax dollars come on.
Refuge manager critical of elk test and slaughter plan
Associated Press
JACKSON, Wyo. - A proposal to test and slaughter brucellosis-carrying elk is unethical and destined to fail, says National Elk Refuge Manager Barry Reiswig.
It is among a long list of recommendations for controlling the disease that the Wyoming Brucellosis Coordination Team plans to present to Gov. Dave Freudenthal next month.
The 19-member team finalized the list during a meeting Dec. 15 in Lander.
While Reiswig supports some of the recommendations, he said he can not imagine a worse strategy for managing brucellosis than test-and-slaughter. "It's another Band-Aid solution that's not going to solve the problem," he said.
The recommendation calls for starting a pilot program at a state elk feedground in the Pinedale area. That would entail building a five-mile fence and 8-foot-tall corral so elk could be captured, run through a chute and tested for exposure to brucellosis.
If successful, the program would need to be expanded to all 23 elk feedgrounds in northwestern Wyoming to be effective. Eventually, the federally run National Elk Refuge in Jackson Hole would also need to be involved.
Reiswig called it a "ridiculously expensive" experiment. "Do you have to drive a car off a cliff to realize you're going to be in a wreck when you hit the bottom?" he asked.
Brucellosis spreads to cattle and causes them to abort their calves. The disease turned up in a cattle herd in the Pinedale area a year ago and has since been detected - apparently due to stepped-up testing - in other herds in Wyoming.
The cases have cost Wyoming its federal brucellosis-free status and resulted in new restrictions and testing requirements before Wyoming cattle can be sold to other states.
It is believed that the elk feedgrounds encourage the disease by artificially concentrating elk. Elk which do not frequent feedgrounds are less likely to carry brucellosis.
Some coordination team experts say test-and-slaughter would only be worth the political and economic costs if feedgrounds were phased out once disease rates were lowered. Otherwise brucellosis could only re-emerge later, they say.
Reiswig believes it would be unethical to manage elk in a way to perpetuate brucellosis, then turn around and kill the elk which carry the disease.
Also, he predicted that crews would need helicopters to successfully round up elk on the 25,000-acre National Elk Refuge.
He wondered how the public would feel about winter range restrictions knowing that the Game and Fish Department was chasing, capturing, testing and slaughtering wildlife during the winter.
