Feds Aim for More Wildlife Control
Jackson Hole - Star Tribune
07 May 2006
Brodie Farquhar

LANDER -- The official policy of U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is that brucellosis should be eradicated, not simply controlled in the United States.

Judging from discussion during a meeting here last week, that objective could create even further strain between the federal government and the state of Wyoming over the controversial subject of managing brucellosis-infected bison and elk in northwest Wyoming.

The greater Yellowstone area constitutes the sole remaining reservoir of brucellosis-infected animals in the country.

APHIS veterinarian Bret Combs was asked whether brucellosis could be eradicated without treating wildlife like livestock. Clearly uncomfortable with the question, Combs said that was a policy decision for others -- and at a higher pay grade. He did explain that historically, brucellosis has been eradicated elsewhere only through capturing animals, testing them for the disease and slaughtering those that test positive. “You find infected animals, and you remove them,” he said.

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Deer, Elk Tongues Spread Prion Disease
Hunters Asked to Retrieve Heads to Prevent Spread of Disease
The Chronicle Herald
2006 May 08
Sandra Blakeslee - The New York Times
Photo courtesy of Jeff Harper, The Chronical Herald

The mystery of how deer and elk spread chronic wasting disease from one animal to another may be solved: Their tongues are infectious.

When the animals lick or slobber on each other — a fairly common occurrence, especially among elk — the agent that causes the fatal disease may be shed from their tongues via saliva. And when they graze, leaving sloughed-off tongue cells and saliva in grass and soil, the disease could be widely transmitted.

Dr. Richard Bessen, an associate professor of veterinary molecular biology at Montana State University in Bozeman, discovered the infectious agent, called a prion, in deer and elk tongues. Details of disease transmission still need to be worked out, he said, but he believes the prions in saliva are significant in the growing national epidemic of the disease.

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