Has the science left wildlife management?

[twodot]

Location is.

From UL Bend, south 12miles, west 24 miles, north to Missouri river, east to point of begining @ ULBend.

Or make it very easy, the CMR from UL Bend west and area 10 miles north and south of there.

We have a spot that we have commonly have gone to view game for years in the CMR that you could count on seeing mulies in every direction, some times up to 60 in an evening. the past two years we call it a good day if we see 4. I have not seen a live fawn from there for two summers now.
I do not have first hand knowledge of the situation on the north side of the river / lake but from hearsay it is about the same.
Now, if I go south from here towards agricultural ground down around State road 200 there are mule deer standing along the road sides everywhere. The county weed board also is very busy spraying there. (This is about 40 miles south from the area that the mule deer seem to get very sparse) Lions are virtually unheard of down there.

Are they spraying the heck out of CMR and I just don't know it?

Once again thank you for your efforts.

 

[DougFir]

Does this look right?

They don't have to be spraying the whole area, or even within that area. Whiskey Mountain big horn sheep in Wyoming as an example again. They don't spray the whole mountain, just part of the winter range on Torrey rim, it is very targeted. One of the plants they are targeting is fringed sage brush, which the sheep target first thing when they hit the winter range. They do not target it the rest of the year, so it has been deemed an "unpalatable" plant. This is a native plant by the way, that has been recently found to contain essential oils that combat lung worm(which causes pneumonia) in sheep. So this has a lot of down stream consequences.

The road side spraying and animal behavior you refer to is seen all over the West. This is my specialty right here. So they spray the road sides, and the animals come in and eat the treated vegetation. Many of them draw animals into them. The herbicides induce conditions like metabolic acidosis, which leads to thyroid disease, and mineral deficiencies. The other thing being sprayed on these roads, is salt and magnesium chloride in the winter time. Because of the herbicide induced metabolic conditions the animals have a greater need for minerals, including magnesium, and specifically selenium. So they hang out on the side of the road eating magnesium chloride, and other minerals(some of these road side spots have been documented to be high in selenium) in the salt pockets on the side of the road. You will see this is in very specific spots, like bends with banks that concentrate the run off to the side of the road. I first documented the draw for magnesium last year here in Utah, this was before then an unknown mineral draw for animals.

And yeah, you don't see a lot of lions on the road sides. There have been some collar studies that show that lions typically avoid crossing busy roads, busy urban environments, etc. There are exceptions of course, and they do work the fringes of these, but in my road side survey work, we never see lion sign, and all the deer are concentrated on the road sides. I talked with a frustrated bow hunter the other night that lamented that if he got 300 yards off the road, the deer disappeared, and that they were concentrated on the road. He had been watching this play out for two years. He knew something was up, he just did not have the details.

These deer(and other wildlife) that concentrate on the road side, eating treated vegetation, die from higher vehicle mortality, and over time they succumb to the affects of herbicide exposure. Sometimes its the fawns born with congenital hypothyroidism to exposed mothers, or the combined affects of bucks that can't breed because of testicular malformations. This coupled with the fact that thyroid disease affects does at a 2:1 rate over males, and that herbicide exposure pushes buck to doe ratios up, you end up with very reduced fecundity, and a stagnate population suffering from epigenetic conditions, just waiting for a heavy winter, or severe drought, or other chemical introduction to pull the trigger on that loaded gun, and empty the clip.

 

[DougFir]

Here is what an under bite caused by congenital hypothyroidism looks like in a mule deer fawn, born to a mother along a treated road side.

These are called under bites, but what is going on is more complicated than that. It is a combination of under developed premaxillary bones(upper face), and malformed lower incisors. The lower jaw is actually the correct length. This is definitive result of hypothyroidism. It is caused by bad signalling of a gene that is influenced by thyroid signalling. Many herbicides have been documented to delay cranial facial development.

Deer born like this have a hard time suckling, and in the most severe cases have a hard time browsing because the lower incisors do not match up properly with the upper dental pad. Mule deer are very specific eaters so this has serious consequences. This is an epigenetic defect, meaning the genes of these animals have been altered by external influences. Deer that do not express as severely and survive, will go on to have fawns with this condition of varying degrees, they are more susceptible to disease, require higher mineral content than normal deer, and are twice as likely to have male fawns born with undescended testicles(cryptorchidism), and reduced fertility. These bucks that make it, many times have disrupted and abnormal antler growth.

 

[1_pointer]

Not sure if you remember, but I met you, your dad, and your brother for a day of hiking and showing me around near Ogden a bit over a decade ago. Then you guys were just getting into making the tipi's/stoves. IIRC we met via the Kifaru forum.

FWIW, that picture you have of Deseret has been occurring on DL&L since at least 2000-2001. I know because I did my MS research on the ranch. Heck, I'd say some form of mechanical treatment has been going on the ranch since the 80s. Do you have record of them spraying weeds on these treatments? I know they never expressed to me while I was there. I can give you a rough break down of the wildlife numbers on the ranch from about 1983 to about 2004. The deer herd went from about 4500 to about 3000. The moose herd went from about 90 to about 200. The elk herd went from about 900 to about 3000. The pronghorn herd went from 0 to about 500. Sage grouse numbers have waxed and waned over the years, but at one time that ranch was home to 1/4 of the documented sage grouse males in the state.

Similar treatments that I help plan got no more than a spot treatment of noxious weeds as there isn't the budget for it. If they are done correctly, in the correct areas, generally noxious weeds aren't an issue. Same with stabilization/rehad after a fire in much of that country.

 

[RobG]

Or, the way I paraphrased it to make it understandable for those that do not have a scientific back ground. Is this an over simplification? yes. But, aromatic amino acids include things like thyroxine which is a thyroid hormone, that is selenium dependent.

Glyphosate was first and foremost patented as a mineral chelator, it is a big part of how it works.

Josh, I am sympathetic to your cause, but there are many simplified descriptions out there on how it kills plants. Your description was starkly different and you used it as a basis of your claims. By doing so you lost all credibility.

Some input/observations:
You may think you can hold your own against PhDs, but, as one, I can assure you that you fail miserably in constructing credible arguments. It does not matter how significant a discovery is if it looks like bad research.

Being self funded hurts your credibility with the people that matter. What it says to them is that nobody thinks your research is worth funding. Similarly, working independently is interpreted as nobody thinks you are worth collaborating with. Don't worry about Albus etc, your target audience needs to be the scientific community and they understand Monsanto isn't going to provide your funding.

If you are serious about this problem get properly educated in a science-based field. Trust me, the world will still be screwed up after you get through with college and you seem more than smart enough to obtain solid credentials. At least ask for help from someone with a relevant research background on how you can improve the presentation of your results so they are more credible. There are qualified people sympathetic to your cause. If they are not willing to work with you it means you need to make some changes. It is more important to determine what those changes are than to take more photos of twisted deer nuts.

 

[DougFir]

Not sure if you remember, but I met you, your dad, and your brother for a day of hiking and showing me around near Ogden a bit over a decade ago. Then you guys were just getting into making the tipi's/stoves. IIRC we met via the Kifaru forum.

FWIW, that picture you have of Deseret has been occurring on DL&L since at least 2000-2001. I know because I did my MS research on the ranch. Heck, I'd say some form of mechanical treatment has been going on the ranch since the 80s. Do you have record of them spraying weeds on these treatments? I know they never expressed to me while I was there. I can give you a rough break down of the wildlife numbers on the ranch from about 1983 to about 2004. The deer herd went from about 4500 to about 3000. The moose herd went from about 90 to about 200. The elk herd went from about 900 to about 3000. The pronghorn herd went from 0 to about 500. Sage grouse numbers have waxed and waned over the years, but at one time that ranch was home to 1/4 of the documented sage grouse males in the state.

Similar treatments that I help plan got no more than a spot treatment of noxious weeds as there isn't the budget for it. If they are done correctly, in the correct areas, generally noxious weeds aren't an issue. Same with stabilization/rehad after a fire in much of that country.

The mechanical treatments have increased exponentially since 2010. I don't have anything solid on herbicide use on Deseret, but we are seeing elk and deer coming off of the fringes that have some severely abnormal antler growth. Again nothing definitive on Deseret, we just started to see elk with Hardware tags showing up on the fringes of Deseret this year, so there may be other explanations.

Hardware is a whole other story, they have applied tens of thousands of dollars in herbicides to the area. Here are the details on a few of these: http://wri.utah.gov/WRI/Proposal/TitlePage.aspx?id=973 Sprayed Imazapic/$14,000 This one is an active project: http://wri.utah.gov/WRI/Proposal/TitlePage.aspx?id=2281 spray herbicides/$12,000 Another one: http://wri.utah.gov/WRI/Proposal/Completion.aspx?id=853 Tebuthuron treatment/$104,000

Your comment about the money is spot on. During the economic decline, spraying went way down in most areas because the money just was not there. As the economy improves and money becomes available, the use of herbicides is ramping up, and we are seeing increased issues in wildlife again, following what had been an uptick in populations. This is what we saw in the late 1980s, and early 1990s leading up to the big declines of the early 1990s.

I remember you, we went down the "crazy route". What I had always thought was the route the mule deer used to migrate down off that mountain. I have since learned other wise. That area we hiked use to winter about 700 mule deer. At its height in 2011 with several years of selenium supplementation, it wintered around 150, and is currently declining from that. The back side of that mountain gets sprayed(ski resort), as does both main canyons to the North and South, and in the early 1990s they started to treat the irrigation water in the canal in the foothills with a biocide, which they still do.

Herbicide use ebbs and flows with economics across the West, whether it is utility companies changing hands(power line spraying) natural gas booms(pipe line spraying) habitat projects(tax revenue dependent in many cases) or road side spraying(also tax revenue dependent) it require money, and there is and has been alot spent lately. We are on track for the next big round of declines, some are already occurring.

 

[twodot]

DougFir, yes that is a very close approximation of the area.

You believe the deer up here are traveling 40 some miles south to browse the sprayed areas? I suppose that is possible, would be very hard for one like myself to know for sure.

I just would like to find a skull that did not have the muzzle crushed or totally gone to look for deformation.

 

[DougFir]

Josh, I am sympathetic to your cause, but there are many simplified descriptions out there on how it kills plants. Your description was starkly different and you used it as a basis of your claims. By doing so you lost all credibility.

Some input/observations:
You may think you can hold your own against PhDs, but, as one, I can assure you that you fail miserably in constructing credible arguments. It does not matter how significant a discovery is if it looks like bad research.

Being self funded hurts your credibility with the people that matter. What it says to them is that nobody thinks your research is worth funding. Similarly, working independently is interpreted as nobody thinks you are worth collaborating with. Don't worry about Albus etc, your target audience needs to be the scientific community and they understand Monsanto isn't going to provide your funding.

If you are serious about this problem get properly educated in a science-based field. Trust me, the world will still be screwed up after you get through with college and you seem more than smart enough to obtain solid credentials. At least ask for help from someone with a relevant research background on how you can improve the presentation of your results so they are more credible. There are qualified people sympathetic to your cause. If they are not willing to work with you it means you need to make some changes. It is more important to determine what those changes are than to take more photos of twisted deer nuts.

If you are sympathetic to this, hunting and wildlife, put your PHD and money behind it. Letters behind names don't conduct field work or make discoveries, can they bolster them? Absolutely, but I have no practical use for a few letters to go behind my name right now, and I have no plans to purchase any. I come from merit based industries, where results are what matter. I have no formal engineering degree, but I pay a good portion of my bills engineering for firms that employ several MEs. They don't pay me for my "credentials", they pay me for what I accomplish for them.

Edit: "It is more important to determine what those changes are than to take more photos of twisted deer nuts." This is caused by the left testicle descending through the right inguinal ring. During sexual dimorphism, Sonic Hedge Hog gene signals ahead(driven by cues from thyroid hormones) of the descent of the testes laying the ground work for the formation of the scrotum. With the improper descent and there for disrupted SHH signalling, the scrotum is formed 90 degrees out. You can see this occur in clusters of animals all over the West. The National Bison range(where lots of herbicides have been used) is a good place to observe this.

I have sympathetic, qualified people that work with me on this. Are you saying it is more important to make changes to what I am doing, including ceasing documentation and research, to seek more people? I did come over here after being pointed to it.

I have defied convention my entire life. And I'm rogue in just about everything I do. If I were to have gone to school and learned to conform, would the results of what I am doing be the same, diminished, or better? Or is it the rogue nature of how I have approached this that has brought these results?

 

[DougFir]

DougFir, yes that is a very close approximation of the area.

You believe the deer up here are traveling 40 some miles south to browse the sprayed areas? I suppose that is possible, would be very hard for one like myself to know for sure.

I just would like to find a skull that did not have the muzzle crushed or totally gone to look for deformation.

They would not have to go that far, but they could be. Within those bounds I'm seeing ranches, and a few areas out side of there that have burned. There is currently a lot of brush being taken off for cattle. With beef prices being so high, there is a lot going in the industry. We are seeing increased rates of Weak Calf Syndrome in association with this brush removal. A local ranch has experienced still birth rates as high as 40% after using herbicides to remove brush. When I first started to supplement deer with selenium several years ago all you could get at the feed store was 36ppm selenium. Over on Whiskey mountain several years ago they had to have special blocks made with 60ppm selenium. With the massive increases in WCS you can now readily find "selenium 90" blocks in most feed stores. These have 90ppm selenium.

The local ranch that had experienced the 40% still birth rate, dropped that rate to 15% with selenium supplementation. This is because of the role selenium plays in thyroid disorders, brought on by herbicide exposure.

 

[RobG]

If you are sympathetic to this, hunting and wildlife, put your PHD and money behind it. Letters behind names don't conduct field work or make discoveries, can they bolster them? Absolutely, but I have no practical use for a few letters to go behind my name right now, and I have no plans to purchase any. I come from merit based industries, where results are what matter. I have no formal engineering degree, but I pay a good portion of my bills engineering for firms that employ several MEs. They don't pay me for my "credentials", they pay me for what I accomplish for them.

That attitude is preventing you from being taken seriously by the people with the ability to change policy. That is a shame. You may be accomplishing things for those MEs, but you are not accomplishing much by making unfounded claims based on twisted deer nut photos. But it is clear you will never accept that fact so carry on.

 

[DougFir]

That attitude is preventing you from being taken seriously by the people with the ability to change policy. That is a shame. You may be accomplishing things for those MEs, but you are not accomplishing much by making unfounded claims based on twisted deer nut photos. But it is clear you will never accept that fact so carry on.

Not twisted, any biologist or vet can attest that that scrotum formed 90 degrees out. Prove that it is an unfounded claim.

Calling my claims unfounded, with your own unfounded insinuations?..............OK.

 

[Oneye]

That attitude is preventing you from being taken seriously by the people with the ability to change policy. That is a shame. You may be accomplishing things for those MEs, but you are not accomplishing much by making unfounded claims based on twisted deer nut photos. But it is clear you will never accept that fact so carry on.

Because he doesn't have a degree you don't think his research should be taken seriously? He could go get a wildlife degree and not understand half of what his research consists of. Research should be taken seriously because it is tested and proven, with ample information. The problem is, especially in Utah, politics and money are more important than research.

 

[DougFir]

The problem is, especially in Utah, politics and money are more important than research.

I think he already said that, didn't he?

 

[Oneye]

I think he already said that, didn't he?

I'm just saying I doubt the degree is going to make those policy changers any more likely to listen.

 

[RobG]

Because he doesn't have a degree you don't think his research should be taken seriously? He could go get a wildlife degree and not understand half of what his research consists of. Research should be taken seriously because it is tested and proven, with ample information. The problem is, especially in Utah, politics and money are more important than research.

Maybe I wasn't clear. The purpose of the degree is to teach him how to do proper research rather than get letters following his name. What he is doing now is of little worth because he doesn't know what he is doing. Sorry, Josh... you need more than pictures of "misplaced hemiscrota" in areas treated with chemicals to determine what caused it.

When qualified people don't take you seriously it is a sign that you are doing it wrong. But, if you don't want to believe me, there DOES appear to be a dearth of north/south aligned deer nut pictures on the internet, and if you publish enough of them maybe the Finding Bigfoot producers will contact you with an offer. I'm afraid that is about the best you can hope for if you don't learn how to conduct and document proper research. Sorry...

 

[DougFir]

I'm just saying I doubt the degree is going to make those policy changers any more likely to listen.

......

 

[TheJason]

Maybe I wasn't clear. The purpose of the degree is to teach him how to do proper research rather than get letters following his name. What he is doing now is of little worth because he doesn't know what he is doing. Sorry, Josh... you need more than pictures of "misplaced hemiscrota" in areas treated with chemicals to determine what caused it.

When qualified people don't take you seriously it is a sign that you are doing it wrong. But, if you don't want to believe me, there DOES appear to be a dearth of north/south aligned deer nut pictures on the internet, and if you publish enough of them maybe the Finding Bigfoot producers will contact you with an offer. I'm afraid that is about the best you can hope for if you don't learn how to conduct and document proper research. Sorry...

I'm with Rob. There may be correlation, but you need to establish causation. However, when I suggested this above I got a smarta$$ comment from Oneye.

 

[DougFir]

Maybe I wasn't clear. The purpose of the degree is to teach him how to do proper research rather than get letters following his name. What he is doing now is of little worth because he doesn't know what he is doing. Sorry, Josh... you need more than pictures of "misplaced hemiscrota" in areas treated with chemicals to determine what caused it.

When qualified people don't take you seriously it is a sign that you are doing it wrong. But, if you don't want to believe me, there DOES appear to be a dearth of north/south aligned deer nut pictures on the internet, and if you publish enough of them maybe the Finding Bigfoot producers will contact you with an offer. I'm afraid that is about the best you can hope for if you don't learn how to conduct and document proper research. Sorry...

This is what you get from a lot of PHDs. This is how they "refute" things. They start out by saying for example that a scrotum is "twisted", and not what you say it is. But when asked to support that claim, they then concede, and make the issue about something else. Ask them about the scientific basis of things, they make it about attitudes, address the attitude issue, and ask them to support their claims, it will be about something else. I get this all the time from "qualified" people. They usually don't work in the field, or have a background in the subject matter, but oh are they qualified.

See, you can win a car race, but if you are not trained and certified, it does not count now does it?

Deer in a concentrated area are subjected to herbicide exposure, they then exhibit an array of malformations, known to be caused by herbicide exposure. Such a mystery. Maybe someone with a PHD can explain to me what is really going on, since I apparently have it all wrong? Or did I get the nod and wink wrong?

 

[Oneye]

I'm with Rob. There may be correlation, but you need to establish causation. However, when I suggested this above I got a smarta$$ comment from Oneye.

I wouldn't do that

 

[DougFir]

I'm with Rob. There may be correlation, but you need to establish causation. However, when I suggested this above I got a smarta$$ comment from Oneye.

Deer are drawn to road sides, where they eat herbicide treated vegetation(documented), then over the following years you see developmental malformations in these deer, cranial facial malformations for example that have been documented in captive animals fed herbicides. Take the herbicides away or look at areas with less or no exposure and you don't see these malformations.

So what causes the malformations that you should not document unless you have been to college? This part of it is the easy part, this the sixth grade observational life science part of the equation.