Hey BHRam

[MarvB]

Paul did you go to that CWD Symposium at the high school there in Hamilton last night?? Was wondering if there was anything of interest that came out of MT's mgt. plan for this? Thanks- Marv

P.S. Non-related side bar....looks like the museum there in Hamilton is going to do an exhibit this spring of the wife's GreatGranPappys (Bertie Lord) early Montana photography...if interested, I'll shoot you the dates when they release them

 

[BigHornRam]

Marv,

Yes I did , and yes I would be interested on the dates. I was hoping for an article in the paper summerizing the talk to cut and paste and save some time. There will be an article in a future bugle magazine and it was taped and will be on DVD for sportsmens groups to view.

It was interesting. We have a lot to learn about CWD and all the other brain wasting diseases. Developing an early detection method is one priority. Montana FWP is testing for CWD in wild deer and elk, and while it is not here yet, they expect it to show up in the wild in the future. A lot of time was spent talking about Montana's management plan when and if it gets here. The question and answer sesion was interesting as well. I'll keep looking for a link to post here that explains the issue better than I can.

BTW it was well attended. There was about 200 people present.

 

[MarvB]

Thanks Paul- will be looking forward to hearing more on this especially since one of the place I hunt in WY (Casper area) is in the midsts of this as well.

CA DFG went to regulation changes in late -03 regarding importation of harvested animals as of now only the following body parts are allowed:

boned-out meat and commercially processed cuts of meat
portions of meat with no part of the spinal column or head attached
hides with no heads attached
clean skull plates (no meat or tissue attached) with antlers attached
antlers with no meat or tissue attached
finished taxidermy heads
upper canine teeth (buglers, whistlers, ivories)

Kind of makes bringing out of state game back a pain but I do understand their concerns. Fortunately this state has had a long-term ban on the importation of live elk, prohibition on elk farming, and has strict monitoring of live deer importations.

 

[ELKCHSR]

Thanks Paul..
Sorry I couldn't show, I finally got an invite to go ice fishing, what a blast, but glad you went to report backs.. thanks again.

 

[BigHornRam]

Here's the write up in this mornings paper. Marv, if your coming up here this spring, get yourself a bear tag by April 14 and we'll see if we can find a nice bear.

Expect chronic wasting in Montana 'any time,' says FWP
By JENNIFER McKEE Missoulian State Bureau



HAMILTON - Chronic wasting disease, the mysterious killer that eats holes in the brains of deer and elk, could show up in Montana "any time," a state wildlife official said here Wednesday.

"We're afraid and you can see why we're afraid," Tim Feldner of the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks said at a Chronic Wasting Disease Symposium held at Hamilton High School. The symposium, which drew about 100 people, was put on by Rocky Mountain Laboratories, a federal lab that has been studying the family of brain-wasting diseases for 40 years, longer than any other lab in the country.

The ailment has shown up in wild deer and elk just 100 miles from the state border, both in Wyoming to the south and Saskatchewan to the north, he said. Montana is in the process of crafting a state plan to prevent chronic wasting from showing up here or to contain the disease if it does occur.



Feldner gave an overview of the plan, which suggests an outright ban on importing any game farm deer and elk from states that have chronic wasting. Right now, it is legal to import deer and elk from states with the disease if the game farm in question has not had a case of the disease in five years.

The plan also suggests banning feeding deer and elk. As a state, Montana does not feed deer or elk, but citizens may as long as it doesn't unnaturally congregate animals. Feldner said Montana should consider banning the practice outright.

The plan also calls for closing the state's rehabilitation center for orphaned fawns. Right now, the Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks takes in about 50 fawns a year at a central rehabilitation center in Helena. The animals are taught to live in the wild and returned to the place they were found.

But that involves concentrating the animals unnaturally, Feldner said. If one of those fawns had chronic wasting, it could spread to fellow orphans and then farmed out throughout the state.

"The benefit to wildlife (of rehabilitation) is zero," he said. "The risk? We don't really know."

The plan also lays out how the state may deal with chronic wasting if it is ever found here. That plan calls for killing up to half the deer or elk within 5 miles of where the first case was found if more than 1 percent of the animals in the area test positive. From there, he said, the state would continue testing other animals.

The plan is expected to be formally released later this month and people will be able to comment on it. A final plan is expected by this summer.

Chronic wasting disease is the deer and elk strain of a family of diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, TSEs.

Rocky Mountain Labs scientists also gave an overview of the TSEs, about which science knows relatively little. The diseases are associated with a nearly ubiquitous protein found in the tissues of almost every mammal, said Sue Priola, a lab researcher. For reasons that are still not clear, that protein sometimes misfolds. That misfolded protein is called a prion and it cannot be destroyed by the normal ways the body digests proteins.

Left to run amok in the body, these indestructible, misshapen prions form long strands and congregate in the brain and central nervous system, Priola said. There, prions cause holes in the brain, which lead to a series of devastating symptoms always followed by death.

It's not clear exactly what causes the prion to get misshapen, she said. One theory holds the prions themselves are infectious, although what causes the first prion to become misshapen is unclear. Another theory holds that some yet unknown virus actually causes the disease and the misshapen prions are merely another symptom.

The biggest question, she said, is whether chronic wasting can spread to people who eat the meat of infected deer and elk, the same way people who eat beef infected by bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE, get the deadly human form of the disease called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

There's no evidence that chronic wasting disease can spread to people, she said. Plus, while both humans and deer and elk make the protein involved in TSEs, they are not identical between humans and animals. But it's still possible the disease could switch species.

"Humans could be susceptible," she said. "But transmission wouldn't be very easy."

 

[ELKCHSR]

Thanks a lot Paul...

 

[BigHornRam]

Here's some more indepth information on Montana's CWD plan from this mornings paper.

State plan works to slow CWD
By JENNIFER McKEE Missoulian State Bureau



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.

 

[MarvB]

Thanks again Paul for the update!

Regarding the

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

Didn't they do this in Wisconsin or some other state awhile back?? I was just wondering a)what the outcome was (besides less deer) and b)if there is a selection process in the 50% reduction (does firs, fawns, bucks, age??) or if its just a chance see and shoot kinda thing. Also wonder if they have outlets for the meat on those that test negative but that might be a processing nightmare to keep things separate.

A lot of questions on the horizon for many states.....

 

[ELKCHSR]

I didn't realize the state had set up coningency plans to this extent just in case.
It is really good to hear that protective measures have been set in place.
Thanks for all of the updates Paul, they have been very helpful.

 

[BigHornRam]

According to the CWD symposium, Wisconsin did this in 2002 at the cost of 11 million dollars. Ouch.

 

[ELKCHSR]

HOLY COW!!!!
Our 200,000 is a drop in the bucket and extremely cheep...