Earthjustice, on behalf of the Greater Yellowstone Coalition, Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, Defenders of Wildlife, Wyoming Outdoor Council and the National Wildlife Refuge Association, filed a lawsuit in Washington, D.C. to stop the feeding of wild elk at the National Elk Refuge in Jackson, Wyoming. The groups state that continued feeding is inviting an outbreak of chronic wasting disease, which is prevalent in areas as close as 70 miles away. Other diseases are already in existence there.
According to the New York Times, crowding animals together increases the likelihood of spreading disease ten fold.
Wildlife biologists warn that feeding the animals that crowd together at the National Elk Refuge and at 22 other state feeding grounds in Wyoming is likely to worsen any outbreak of chronic wasting disease. Conditions at feed lots increase disease rates up to 10 times those found in the wild because diseases are passed rapidly among animals in close contact.
Much of the actions and reactions of biologists toward chronic wasting disease come even though there is a lot about the disease that is unknown or misunderstood. As an example of that, the New York Times article states that killing animals stops the spread of the disease.
Discovered in a Colorado research facility in the 1960s, chronic wasting disease has forced biologists to kill hundreds of infected wild deer from Wisconsin to Wyoming and thousands of others that are not infected to keep the disease from spreading.
Perhaps misstated here, authorities have killed the animals thinking it would help but the evidence this is true is debatable. In Colorado, the practice of killing animals was called off after efforts showed little if any affect to the spreading of the disease. In Wisconsin, killing continues but many there don’t believe it is helping at all and is quite costly.
Much remains unexplained about the disease which doesn’t help in being able to do anything constructive to stop the spread. It is believed now that whatever is responsible for the transmission of the disease remains in the soil in infected areas for years. Some research indicates that the disease may be transmitted through feed, like hay, harvested in areas where the soil in contaminated. Some scientists also believe that CWD occurs naturally.
In the meantime, some good news reported from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and Colorado State University. Researchers say they have developed a test for chronic wasting disease that can be done on live animals and results appear to be as good or even better than the existing tests done on the brain tissue of dead animals. This of course would be a huge step forward in being able to detect the disease.
Researchers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) and Colorado State University (CSU) recently completed their third year of evaluating and validating the first live rectal-tissue biopsy method for detecting chronic wasting disease (CWD) in captive and wild elk. To date, researchers have collected over 1,500 biopsies from captive elk in Colorado and used the technique to find 15 elk that were positive for CWD. As compared to proven post-mortem diagnostic tests, this live test appears to be nearly as accurate.
With a live test, methods can be employed to help prevent the spread of the disease in both captive and wild animals but until science is able to accurately determine what causes CWD and exactly how it is spread, we mustn’t believe this new test is by any means a cure. Only a major step.
Tom Remington
