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Govener Switzer thinks he can shut down brucellosis

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Lately in Montana Govener Switzer shut down bison hunt that allowed permits for hunting bison that come out of Yellowstone Park. Now his rediculous idea is he thinks he can destroy the sick buffalo and put in healthy ones. Although he has to gather 4200 buffalo and test them for brucellosis he still thinks he can do it in the next couple of years. This will take 10 years or better and it will never completely get done. Plus tax payers will suffer because he will bangs vaccinate every healthy buffalo in the park :mad:

Any feed back?
 
For years the yellowstone bison went thru a chute and were culled,,,, but we are not suppost to do that any more its unnatural
 
Yes I know but Govener Switzer can and will because he had a meeting Monday with FWP and they can do it but it will take a while.
 
Schweitzer has his own agenda...We ranchers need to be made known to EVERYONE that Brucellosis is also a HUMAN disease, THAT is a problem no one wants to address. With this info, we should want to kill the disease not only because of what it does to our bovine cows, but what it does to humans! It is called Undulant Fever in humans and look it up on the website. I sure wouldn't want the disease! Lets get back to the basics!
 
6 years ago, i had the "opportunity" to take care of a man who came through our er with a fever of 104.8 degrees!!!! he was calm and cool as he told me how he had contracted brucellosis/undulate fever 2 years before while pulling a calf in Idaho....just so happens he had been the state game warden and was doing some "side work" on a ranch!!! brucellosis has no known cure and the patient is sick off/on for the remainer of their lives!!! this is SERIOUS!!!! our ranch is too close to yellowstone to take this issue lightly!!!
 
Oh i won't argue a bit that it isnt serious. Im just saying that it will take him forever to do these bison. Unforntunatley we dont have forever, as brucellosis is spreading and spreading fast. I'm like you ranch wife, our ranch is really close to Big Timber and if the buffalo happen to get into slough creek and get into cows up there it will come right down the boulder river sooner or later.
 
wes....greetings from ENNIS (GO MUSTANGS!!!)....i agree with you on brucellosis...all it would take is ONE cow to contract brucellosis and we would literally 'lose the ranch'...ranching nowadays is hard enough without having to worry about brucellosis, "mad cow" and wolves (another hot topic here in ennis since the kills last fall)...i watch the hubby cringe and grit his teeth each time we have to go to west yellowstone for a litttle league game or for anything else and we have to drive through the buffalo....buffalo kept outside the park boundaries!! scary!!! take care, wes, and have a super day!!! by the way, if you have a kid playing basketball today against the MIGHTY MUSTANGS, my condolences!!LOL!!!
 
We've managed to become brucellosis-free here, and part of the reason it happened was that the wild bison in the national parks were tested and slaughtered if positive. It happened a long time ago, so I'm not sure if they found much of it in those bison, but I do remember them doing roundups and putting them all through the chute to test them.

I worked with the wife of one of the conservation officers who was in charge of the buffalo at Riding Mountain National Park, and she said he dreaded the job because every time they captured the herd they would lose calves to trampling. They did it though, and the result is a national herd that is now totally free of the disease. It wasn't easy, but everyone agrees it was worth the effort.

There is no vaccinating here though. Vaccine distorts the results of a blood test, so there isn't a drop of it anywhere in the country. We know that if it would come back positive it's the disease, not antibodies to vaccine.
 
I hope the plan will work and they can wipe out the brucellosis-- but that said I have very big doubts on it being feasible....They can't even find half the bison in the park to get an accurate head count...Trying to corral bison in Yellowstone is not like running them on the prairie- they're looking at animals that have free range over 2+ million acres of rough terrain and timber--- and if they don't get all the positive carriers they'll never eradicate it.......
 

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