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Posted on 11/22/2011 4:11:22 PM PST by SJackson
Could contraceptives offer protection for the nation's last continuously wild herd of American bison?
At feeding time, residents of the Brogan Bison Facility cluster around a hay bale, blinking at flecks of alfalfa dust that swirl in the air and settle in their shaggy coats. The herd, chewing and lowing, mills in a holding pasture near Corwin Springs, Montana, surrounded by sweeping mountain views and a seven-strand wire fence. Blue-painted squeeze chutes are settled in the dirt nearby, bordered by a swath of prairie grass that stretches for a few miles until it meets the northern border of Yellowstone National Park. This, under a graying sky beginning to spit the first snowflakes of another long winter, is the unlikely center of a contentious debate over birth control.
The bison, gathered after drifting out of Yellowstone earlier this year, are potential subjects of a USDA study of GonaCon, a contraceptive vaccine for wildlife. Originally developed by the USDA as a non-lethal form of pest control, GonaCon works by lowering the concentration of sex hormones in the bloodstream to weaken fertility and the urge to mate. The contraceptive was recently approved in Maryland and New Jersey for curbing the population of wild deer. Now researchers are hoping to use GonaCon to stop the spread of brucellosis, an infectious bacterial disease that causes pregnant ungulates to abort their calves.
(Excerpt) Read more at theatlantic.com ...
I sure wouldn’t want to be the poor fellow that had to put condoms on the big guys.
Yikes.
Here’s a whacky, way out there idea: Have a lottery. Cull them and pass the mashed potatoes.
But I read on Free Republic that raw milk is a great thing!
Unfortunately a lot of gunowners who don't hunt don't understand why they need to defend hunting for the sake of their own rights.
There is a well proven method of bison population control. It involves bows and arrows and skinning knives.
Interesting...
My wife and I are considering raising bison. She has many food allergies and it is one of the meats she can tolerate however it is very expensive.
All of the local farms sold out of their bison and would not cull anymore this year so in some places you can’t get it.
Here’s an idea, shoot the damn things and put them on someone’s plate!
The very first two sentences contract each other. I didn’t read any further.
That’s common sense, government isn’t interested. Though if they considered what the tags would bring in, it would make sense if the funds were allocated to the park. There are plenty of backcountry areas in Yellowstone where a hunt would be safe.
Family planning?!
Bison don’t have “families” and they certainly don’t “plan”.
Is this one of Ted Turner’s ranches? More gun control. Shoot the deer and elk with birth control and then you don’t need to shoot them with lead. Why do the Democrats want all those private firearms gone? Look at how mad they get when they can’t buy enough voters to get their way. Do you think they would have any trouble ordering someone to point a gun at you? Ted Turner is insane. All those little people keep getting in his way when he wants to own Yellowstone.
Brucellosis is a form of TB that can pass the “interspecies barrier” ! Hence the practice of innoculating dairy animals and tagging them that’s prevailed for at least 50 years ! Milk - raw or otherwise - from these animals/herds is safe for human consumption ! Were it not so we’d have had an enormous TB outbreak decades back as all “dairy families” - and often their neighbors - drank “raw” milk !
The issue with Bison is one of long standing, as domestic cattle shared the same range with “wild” bison. Given the dispersed nature of both species in the West, its long been possible for interspecies breeding and transfer of mutually supportable diseases; aka brucellosis, before prophylactic measures could be implemented on domestic herds.
Personally, I don’t see any reason for the “wild” distinction, and many against it. IMO, the american bison throve upon developing genetic diversity within isolated populations that - in the fullness of time - were introduced/tested in the general population on a hapstance basis. The so-called “wild” population - sans TB protection - is small hence may be a genetic dead end FAWK ! Remember this was a species that evolved to create large populations and multiple genetic evolutions within that population, if Mendel’s Laws prevail. >PS
The brucellosis problem is a tad different. For many years the big complaint was that "wild" buffalo passed it to "tame" cattle ~ supposedly unfairly or something (big Democrat issue on that one).
I think the surrounding cattle in this case involve both buffalo raised under conditions of domestication and domesticated old world cattle raised for meat.
Not sure there are dairy cows out there wandering around in that part of the country now that we can haul milk cross country in tankers.
But you raise a good point about how buffalo succeeded in raising up huge numbers that weren't killed off by brucellosis or other diseases ~ and you'd better believe the brucellosis was fighting back trying to come up with "killer aps" that could strike back at the buffalo, and any humans in the area.
Notice that the American Indians, with a gazillion buffalo around, didn't domesticate any of them ~ so why? Down in South America the same Indians domesticated vicuna, guanaco, llama, etc. Obviously the idea of domestication was current in the Americas!
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If safety is a concern they could make it traditional archery/blackpowder only. Somehow he idea of taking a bison with a 45-70 trapdoor Springfield just seems right.
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