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Article 3/14/05 |
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| State
plan works to slow CWD
By Jennifer McKee, Missoulian
3/14/05 |
HELENA
- A single case of chronic wasting disease in Montana
could cost the state up to $200,000 as part of a developing
plan that calls for "reducing to dust" the carcasses
of any infected animals, a new plan shows.
State wildlife officials are currently working on Montana's
plan to prevent the spread of chronic wasting disease
in the state's deer and elk herds. Early information about
the plan calls for actively looking for the disease and
potentially destroying up to 50 percent of the deer and
elk within 5 miles of any occurrence of chronic wasting.
A representative of the state's largest hunting organization
praised the state for trying to deal with disease.
"This department seems to be very proactive,"
said Larry Copenhaver of the Montana Wildlife Federation.
"They take this very seriously."
Tim Feldner of the Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department
outlined the state's tentative plan at a forum in Hamilton
last week. He spoke in greater detail in a recent interview
with the Missoulian State Bureau.
Early detection of the disease is critical to control
its spread, Feldner said. To that end, the state has been
testing the brains of thousands of hunter-killed deer
and elk, mostly east of the divide, for years.
Department officials have never found any evidence of
the disease.
Should one of those tests ever come up positive, the state
would sample animals within a 5-mile radius, or 78 square
miles, of the site where the infected animal was found.
If more than 1 percent of those animals test positive
for chronic wasting, the state would begin a "population
reduction" - a shoot and kill - to destroy up to
50 percent of the animals in that zone, Feldner said.
They would continue sampling in ever larger circles until
fewer than 1 percent of the animals tested have the disease.
All of those animals would be tested for the disease,
he said. Animals that test negative will be either donated
to food banks or given to the hunter who shot it. Animals
that test positive would be burned in a special, high-temperature,
wood-fueled incinerator FWP owns but has never had to
use.
"They're vaporized," Feldner said. "There's
pretty much nothing left."
Such high temperatures are necessary to stop the spread
of the disease because chronic wasting and the entire
family of prion-related ailments appear to be unlike any
other diseases. They cannot be stopped by means that kill
most other pathogens.
While exact figures are not yet available, Feldner said
he thought up to 400 animals could be destroyed in a worst-case
chronic-wasting scenario. Between testing lymph node and
brain tissue of all those animals, incineration and decontamination
costs, the total bill for one case of chronic wasting
could run up to $200,000.
Chronic wasting disease, associated with misshapen proteins
called prions that clump together in the brains of infected
animals, causes holes to form in brain tissue that leads
to emaciation, excessive drooling, loss of body control
and eventually death.
Montana has never found a case of chronic wasting in wild
deer and elk here, however, elk at a game farm near Philipsburg
did test positive for the ailment in 1999. The elk were
destroyed and Montana voters have since outlawed new game
farms to control the disease.
Chronic wasting disease is related to mad cow disease
in cattle and scrapie in sheep. There is no evidence that
chronic wasting can infect people the way mad cow sickens
people who eat the flesh of infected cattle. Scientists
say such a transmission may be possible, but is unlikely.
Exactly what causes the disease and how it is spread from
animal to animal is unknown.
Figures from Wisconsin show it costs that state about
85 cents a pound to destroy an animal with chronic wasting.
Feldner said he thought Montana's costs would probably
be in the same ballpark.
Feldner said hunters would be used where possible to cull
the animals needed both for sampling and for the population
reduction. If chronic wasting is found after hunting season,
agency workers would shoot the animals.
All the carcasses would be frozen pending the outcome
of the chronic wasting disease tests.
Even if chronic wasting is never found in the state, the
plan suggests several measures to prevent the disease
from showing up. They include: banning the import of any
live game farm deer and elk from states that have chronic
wasting, requiring hunters to dispose of deer and elk
carcasses, including the head, in landfills only. This
would end the time-honored practice of nailing a deer
or elk head to a fence to let birds clean it off. Additionally,
the plan suggests ending a current practice of trying
to rehabilitate and release into the wild orphaned deer
fawns and elk calves. The state would continue to rehabilitate
other orphaned young animals, like bear, mountain goats
and bighorn sheep.
The state of Wyoming, where chronic wasting first showed
up in the early 1980s, recently announced biologists there
are also working on a plan to control the spread of the
disease. For the last two decades, Wyoming has not actively
tried to stop the spread of the disease, which has now
been found as far north as the Bighorn Basin, just 100
miles south of Montana.
"I think there is concern. Wyoming is pretty much
just a surveillance state," Feldner said, adding
the state's expected plan may end that.
Any of the changes called for in Montana's plan would
have to be approved by the Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission,
which oversees the department.
Commission Chairman Steve Doherty of Great Falls said
preventing chronic wasting is as important to the state's
wildlife as stopping brucellosis is to the state's cattle
industry.
"We've got to do everything we possibly can to keep
that disease out of Montana," he said.
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