Posted on 06/23/2006 12:42:18 AM PDT by hedgetrimmer
A federal official’s memorandum that seeks to define animal health policy in relation to the nation’s wildlife has stirred up more questions than answers among state officials, conservationists and livestock interests.
That official -- John R. Clifford, deputy administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Veterinary Services -- is a guest speaker before the Wyoming Stock Growers Association at 1:15 p.m. today at the Parkway Plaza in Casper.
Clifford's memo will be codified into federal regulations “within 12 months of issuance of this memorandum,” dated March 23. Clifford states that under the Animal Health Protection Act, and “in case of an extraordinary disease emergency, the Secretary of Agriculture has broad and expansive authority to seize and dispose of any animal, including wildlife.”
“At first glance, it makes me nervous,” said John Etchepare, director of the Wyoming Department of Agriculture. “I have lots of questions.” “This memo is so vague, I can’t even speculate what it might mean,” said Lloyd Dorsey, a Jackson representative of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition. “Dr. Clifford should explain what this means to Wyoming’s wildlife and sportsmen.”
“We need some clarification,” said Jim Magagna, executive of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association. While the state’s livestock growers welcome the federal role of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service in managing the abortion-inducing disease of brucellosis, there’s a fine line between managing a disease and managing both wildlife and livestock, Magagna said.
“We do not seek a federal management role over wildlife and livestock,” he added.
APHIS has long had a hands-off approach to wildlife management, but it also has taken the position that brucellosis should be eradicated, not simply controlled. The elk and bison of the greater Yellowstone area constitute the sole remaining reservoir of brucellosis-infected animals in the country.
Brucellosis is a bacterial-based disease that can cause abortions in cattle, elk and bison. Wyoming lost its brucellosis-free status in November 2003 after a cattle herd next to the Game and Fish Department's Muddy Creek elk feedground near Pinedale was discovered to be infected with the disease.
The state is seeking reinstatement of that status, which would ease burdensome testing requirements for Wyoming cattle producers.
State officials and others have expressed concern that APHIS's move to a more aggressive approach on brucellosis could lead it to assert more authority over wildlife. Wyoming's position is that wildlife on federal lands in Wyoming belong to the state and the animals' management is under its jurisdiction.
Power grab?
Conservationists are especially alarmed at Clifford's memo.
“This is dangerous for wildlife and state rights,” said D.J. Schubert, a wildlife biologist with the Animal Welfare Institute. He accused the USDA of essentially employing blackmail -- threatening states with revocation of their "brucellosis-free" status if they don’t set up USDA-approved brucellosis eradication programs.
Steve Torbit, senior scientist for National Wildlife Federation, agreed, warning that Wyoming’s cattlemen, wildlife and sportsmen could be held hostage in APHIS’s bid to eradicate brucellosis, even if it means a Draconian test-and-slaughter program of bison and elk.
“We know how to manage, how to control this disease without hurting livestock producers,” Torbit said. He expects APHIS will declare “an emergency” in a bid for unbridled authority over wildlife. “I have yet to see what their definition is for ‘an emergency,’” he said.
It might be difficult to convince the public or federal judges of an emergency, he said, considering that brucellosis has been present in Yellowstone National Park for close to a century.
Meanwhile, a Veterinary Services official insists it is possible to eradicate brucellosis in Yellowstone wildlife without resorting to a massive campaign of test and slaughter.
Mike Gilsdorf, director of ruminant health programs for Veterinary Services, said there are approaches other than a test-and-slaughter program. When pressed for details, he said those were being worked out in consultation with state agencies that have an interest in the park’s wildlife.
“That’s an ongoing discussion,” he said.
Gilsdorf said livestock diseases have been successfully eradicated in wildlife before, referring to a California deer herd that had hoof-and-mouth disease.
According to Troy Swauger, public information officer for the California Department of Fish and Game, a hoof-and-mouth outbreak in and around Stanislaus National Forest led to the slaughter of 22,214 deer, 3,400 cattle and 3,000 sheep between 1924 and 1926.
State biologists saved tissue samples, Swauger said, and years later, those samples were tested.
“It turned out that the deer didn’t have hoof-and-mouth disease,” Swauger said. “What they had was adenovirus disease, which is endemic to California herds and has no cure.”
Gilsdorf said Clifford's memo is a broad policy designed to protect livestock from wildlife that have diseases that can harm livestock -- including brucellosis, tuberculosis and pseudorabies. The ultimate goal is to make sure livestock are “free of exposure” to wildlife-carried diseases, and that when there is a risk of exposure, the states need to come up with management plans to protect livestock from disease.
Gilsdorf said Veterinary Services does not have a deadline in mind for eradication of brucellosis.
“We just want to see progress,” he said.
Gilsdorf said eradication of brucellosis has been USDA policy since 1935. Past successes tell him that brucellosis can be eradicated in Yellowstone as well, if the effort receives additional resources.
He said a policy of control, rather than eradication, would simply mean a “perpetual effort.”
Schubert, the wildlife biologist for the Animal Welfare Institute, said the eradication policy for brucellosis came in an era when thousands of people suffered from undulant fever, an infectious disease due to the brucellosis bacterium that characteristically causes rising and falling fevers, sweats, weakness, anorexia, headache, muscle and back pain. The disease is transmitted through contaminated and untreated milk and milk products and by direct contact with infected animals n a common occurrence 71 years ago, but relatively rare today, Schubert said.
Ping
You mean to tell me that the timber wolves introduced in Yellowstone did not solve all the problems in the park.
“It turned out that the deer didn’t have hoof-and-mouth disease,” Swauger said. “What they had was adenovirus disease, which is endemic to California herds and has no cure.”
Oops!
read again -
"the Secretary of Agriculture has broad and expansive authority to seize and dispose of *any* animal,
-including wildlife.”
Welcome to NAIS.
FYI
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