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After State Kills 3 Wyoming Bighorn, Wildlife Researcher Questions Policy
The Wyoming Game and Fish Department killed three bighorn sheep that wandered into Sinks Canyon State Park out of concern for disease, but a local wildlife researcher questions the need for the killings.
June 14, 20244 min read
Wyoming Game and Fish personnel recently killed three young bighorn rams that wandered into Sinks Canyon State Park, per state policy to prevent the potential spread of lethal disease to other wild sheep.
But a local wildlife researcher questioned the need for the action, suggesting that bighorns should be tested for possible pneumonia infection from domestic sheep before they’re killed, not after.
“I would like to have them take an animal’s life on evidence of a problem, and not just summarily take an animal’s life on the assumption that they’re infected,” Jack States, who lives in the Sinks Canyon area, told Cowboy State Daily on Friday.
Worries Over Disease
Wyoming has a policy to prevent bighorn from mingling with domestic sheep whenever possible. Bighorn are vulnerable to pneumonia and other respiratory diseases that can potentially spread to them from domestic sheep.
So, the rams that wandered into Sinks Canyon State Park were killed to prevent the possibility of them becoming infected and carrying it back to wild herds, according to Game and Fish.
“When bighorn sheep co-mingle with domestic sheep, they may be exposed to bacteria that domestic sheep are known to harbor,” the agency says. “While these pathogens, or bacteria, may be treatable in domestic sheep, they can be fatal to bighorn sheep.”
It’s because of that risk that wildlife officials say they take that drastic action.
“Wandering bighorn sheep pose a very high risk of introducing pathogens back into their wild herds, and we want to prevent future disease events from happening. Bighorn sheep are very sensitive to many pathogens, so we take reasonable precautions to prevent exposure of these pathogens to the herd,” Game and Fish Wildlife Health Laboratory Supervisor Jessica Jennings-Gaines said in a statement from the agency.
Young rams are known to range long distances, but frequently return back to their herds, according to Game and Fish.
It’s thought the rams that were killed came from North Fork Canyon northwest of Lander, “where a small herd exists,” according to the agency.
Tissue samples were taken from the lambs and sent to a laboratory to be tested for disease. Meat from the animals was donated to needly locals.
From the perspective of ranchers, there is also concern that allowing bighorns and domestic sheep to get too near each other could in some instances cause sheep ranchers to lose their grazing leases on federal lands.
Some central Wyoming ranchers are worried about that, in light of the proposed reintroduction of bighorn sheep into the remote and rugged Sweetwater Rocks area.
Critical Of Policy
States has a Ph.D. in environmental ecology and has assisted Game and Fish and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service with bighorn research in Wyoming and other states.
He said he understands the concerns over wild and domestic sheep mingling and the threat of disease.
But he questions the need to kill bighorn sheep without trying to capture them, get blood samples and test those for disease first.
“What if they’re not infected?” States asked. “What if those sheep came from a herd that was not infected, and they eliminated their right to try to find a new habitat?”
Whiskey Mountain Herd Still In Trouble
He said that respiratory disease infections are common in bighorn sheep across Wyoming, and many rams might have developed some immunity.
Ewes don’t seem to have as much immunity, and bighorn lambs seem especially vulnerable to dying from infections, he said.
The famed Whiskey Mountain herd, also near Lander, has battled waves of disease outbreaks since the 1990s.
States said he’s worried about the future of that herd, particularly because lambs keep dying from disease.
“I think they’re still in decline, though they haven’t had the sort of massive die-offs they did in the 1990s,” he said. “We’re not getting the necessary recruitment (lamb survival rates) to prevent the extinction of that herd,” he said.
Allowing bighorn to expand their range in some places might give them better odds, he added.
“We can’t keep restricting bighorn sheep to defined herd units like we’re doing now, where they cross a line and get shot because of possible contract with domestic sheep,” States said.
He said that Game and Fish has kept him in the loop regarding the removal of the rams in Sinks Canyon and the subsequent testing for disease, which he appreciates.
“We need to do everything possible to develop a constructing and transparent relationship with all the agencies involved in sheep management,” he said.
USDA Secretary’s support for factory farming cruelty is an insult to animals and voters
BY
KITTY BLOCK AND SARA AMUNDSON
The HSUS
In the most important farm animal welfare debate of the 21st century so far―the U.S. Supreme Court case regarding California’s Proposition 12—it was beyond disconcerting that the Biden administration put itself on the wrong side of progress by backing the advocates of cruelty and bottom-of-the-barrel pork production. The producers fighting Proposition 12 are trying to maintain the status quo of using intensive confinement systems such as gestation crates—metal cages so small pregnant pigs can’t even turn around for months on end and have been documented chewing on the bars until their mouths bleed from constant frustration. Those who don’t feel like meeting the public’s demand for more humane treatment of farm animals are fighting Proposition 12 every way they can.
Now, the Biden administration’s failure is being compounded by Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack, who is out stumping for zero-welfare pork producers in their efforts to use the Farm Bill to obliterate Proposition 12 and similar laws in other states. And the White House should stop him before he does any further damage to the administration’s reputation and policies on animal welfare. When President Biden took office, his administration had the opportunity to reverse course from the Trump administration’s amicus brief supporting that faction of the pork industry fighting Proposition 12. Instead, Biden’s Solicitor General filed a brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in support of a challenge to California’s Proposition 12.
Now, as Congress moves to finalize the Farm Bill, Secretary Vilsack is recklessly seeking to undermine the interests of thousands of farmers across the country and major public health associations who have all taken a decisive stand against the cruel and dangerous confinement of farm animals.
At its heart, Vilsack’s approach is profoundly undemocratic because it ignores the millions of voters and consumers who have rejected the cruelty of extreme animal confinement at both the ballot box and the supermarket. Moreover, it’s a slap in the face to small family farmers and forward-thinking corporate actors in food production and retail who support more humane standards in agriculture and have made substantial investments in crate-free and cage-free systems. These are parties whose interests Vilsack is also charged to protect, but he’s ignoring them and parroting the misleading claims of the National Pork Producers Council instead.
Vilsack’s use of the word “chaos” is particularly disingenuous, especially considering how he referred to similar efforts in the 2014 Farm Bill to block state laws on intensive confinement as “troublesome in that it would create legal challenges and confusion in the market place….It’s one that we have a lot of concerns about.” If anything, momentum to end caged cruelty has grown since then: 15 states spanning the political spectrum already have laws addressing cruel intensive confinement of farm animals, and 80% of American voters—including nearly equal numbers of Republicans and Democrats—support enactment in their own states of a law to protect farm animals. Across the country, American voters and/or their elected representatives have rejected extreme confinement; it’s the laggard producers Vilsack seems determined to serve who are sowing chaos. The marketplace, consistent with voter preference and consumer demand, is sorting itself out, and Vilsack needs to end his efforts to drown out the basic claim for decent treatment of animals that this section of the industry is determined to reject.
It’s disturbing that as the former governor of Iowa, Vilsack would be so dismissive of the sovereignty of states to govern in the best interests of their citizens when it comes to such fundamental matters as animal welfare and public health. On the other hand, Iowa has long occupied the bottom third of states when it comes to animal protection laws, and its state legislature has gone to great lengths to favor and shield intensive confinement practices in agriculture over the last quarter century. We had hopes that Vilsack would be more attentive to public opinion concerning animal welfare as head of the USDA. But he has dashed those hopes.
A forward-thinking USDA leader would have moved to embrace the enormous economic opportunities that humane laws and corporate supply chain policies have opened up in the wake of successful campaigns to halt agribusiness cruelties such as the gestation crate and the battery cage. He’d listen to the market leaders who are committed to meeting emerging public demand for products that are not the result of intensive confinement cruelty, and he’d take account of the shifting corporate models now moving to meet the same demand. But that’s not Secretary Vilsack.
It’s a shame, especially considering that President Biden took office with one of the strongest animal welfare records of any elected official in American history, a consistent champion for our cause for decades. In stark contrast, his secretary of agriculture has chosen to serve the worst actors in American agriculture―the pork conglomerates that support the cruelest practices and that, in turn, are counting on Secretary Vilsack to sustain their morally bankrupt business models.
They are getting what they want, too, as the secretary is working overtime for these foot-dragging interests. Vilsack is doing so even though he knows that congressional support for the Ending Agricultural Trade Suppression (EATS) Act and other measures targeting laws like Proposition 12 is weak and he doubts there is the political capacity to do something about it.
In fact, that’s the one thing Vilsack’s right about; there are but 14 senators and 37 representatives co-sponsoring the EATS Act, not one of them a member of Vilsack’s own party. By contrast, more than 200 federal legislators on both sides of the aisle oppose this language or anything like it. Vilsack should do the math. Blocking state laws on intensive confinement is a poison pill in the Farm Bill, particularly given how tight the margins are for getting a package over the finish line.
There’s a reason that House Agriculture chair Glenn Thompson, R-Pa., and others hostile to Proposition 12 are attempting to shoehorn language into the Farm Bill; it’s the only way they can foist this shakedown on the American public, and the sight of a Democratic agency head aiding and abetting such a power grab is a sad one.
Industry capture of the USDA is nothing new, of course. But in Vilsack’s case, it has reached a new low. And that’s an insult to animals and the people who care about their welfare.
Sara Amundson is president of the Humane Society Legislative Fund.
https://www.humanesociety.org/blog/vilsack-farm-bill-insults-animals-voters
Former CDC director predicts bird flu pandemic
BY LAUREN IRWIN – 06/15/24 9:43 AM ET
SHAREPOST https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4723753-former-cdc-director-predicts-bird-flu-pandemic/
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Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield said he predicts a bird flu pandemic will happen, it’s just a matter of when that will be.
Redfield joined NewsNation Friday to discuss the growing concern for bird flu, as the virus has been detected in dozens of cattle across the country and the World Health Organization identified the first human death in Mexico.
“I really do think it’s very likely that we will, at some time, it’s not a question of if, it’s more of a question of when we will have a bird flu pandemic,” Redfield said.
He also noted that bird flu has a “significant mortality” when it enters humans compared to COVID-19. Redfield predicts the mortality is “probably somewhere between 25 and 50 percent mortality.” NewsNation noted that the death rate for COVID was 0.6 percent.
At the end of May, the CDC identified the third human case of someone diagnosed with the virus since March. None of the three cases among farmworkers were associated with one another. Symptoms have included a cough without fever and pink eye.
There is no evidence yet that the virus is spreading between humans. Redfield said he knows exactly what has to happen for the virus to get to that point because he’s done lab research on it.
Scientists have found that five amino acids must change in the key receptor in order for bird flu to gain a propensity to bind to a human receptor “and then be able to go human to human” like COVID-19 did, Redfield said.
“Once the virus gains the ability to attach to the human receptor and then go human to human, that’s when you’re going to have the pandemic,” he said. “And as I said, I think it’s just a matter of time.”
Redfield noted that he doesn’t know how long it will take for the five amino acids to change, but since it is being detected in cattle herds across the country, he is a bit concerned.
More than 40 cattle herds nationwide have confirmed cases of the virus. The CDC is tracking wastewater treatment sites to pinpoint where the virus is but the agency said the general public’s current risk of contracting the virus is low.
Since cattle live close to pigs and the virus is able to evolve from pigs to humans, there is cause for concern. Still, he argued, there is greater risk for the disease to be lab-grown.
“I know exactly what amino acids I have to change because in 2012, against my recommendation, the scientists that did these experiments actually published them,” he said. “So, the recipe for how to make bird flu highly infection for humans is already out there.”
Last 2 brain cells…
Exposing the Big Game 