Shoot lone elk wandering through your state

[BigDaddyCaine]

I cant post a link because this is from a small town paper in Nebraska called the Superior Express.

It seems they shot a wild bull elk near the town of hardy. Its crime? It was alone and walking through Nebraska grazing on the land. It was shot by Nebraska Game and Wildlife and the police.

The state believes its wild elk population is free of chronic wasting disease and other diseases related to captive elk. Because of the risk of a lone elk wandering the state and being exposed to one of the diseases, the policy is to destroy the lone elk.

When elk seperate from their herd they will travel hundreds of miles looking for a herd to join. A dominate elk will push other bulls out of their herd causing them to wander the state looking for a new herd.

Nebraska has about 900 elk. That is up from only 100 elk 20 years ago.

[sandnsea]

1. This sounds stupid

Tranquilize it, test it, then make a decision what to do. Is there anything wrong with that approach???

[Massacure]

2. If I recall, you have to remove it's brain to test it.

How it is going to survive without a brain for a couple of weeks?

[sandnsea]

4. Oh well

that could be a problem. :)

[NNadir]

8. Actually it isn't a problem. A huge number of people in the Republican

party do this regularly.

[PeaceForever]

11. I'm trying hard to resist inserting a Bush joke here. n/t

[Boomer]

3. $$$

Unfortunately, given the gross underfunding of most of these agencies, I can't agree that such an expenditure would be feasible.

You need considerable manpower to trap an elk safely, transport it to some kind of facility, test it, board it while waiting for results, then reverse the whole process to put it back into the wild.

[sandnsea]

5. I lived in Montana

They trapped and moved griz their all the time. Here on the Oregon coast, we trap and care for sealife all the time too. Seems a shame when a state only has 900 elk not to take some action to protect them.

[BigDaddyCaine]

6. thats what i was thinking

You only got 900 running through your state, its not like you need to be shooting one just because it might be sick.

[enki23]

7. when you only have 900, you'd damned well better shoot that stray

because if it's carrying a disease, your 900 elk are highly at risk of becoming 0 elk.

[BigDaddyCaine]

9. i dunno

I dont think one lone elk is gonna kill 900. If he had any disease how could he pass it on to the 10 or 15 different herds traveling the state? If he had chronic wasting disease, tracking the animal and watching his behavior would let you know if he is sick or not.

[sandnsea]

10. Or capture it

And watch it to see if it's sick or not. I've been in areas where there's tons of wildlife and understand hunting for population control, balance of nature and all of that. I can also see it when you have large populations in an area and shooting one sick animal won't make much of a difference. That isn't the case in Nebraska and it's just the most backwards of thinking to just shoot them there. Sorry, it just is. It's just callous disregard because we're too cheap to do the logical thing instead of the easy thing. It'll be the undoing of this country for sure.

[petronius]

12. Nebraska is satisfied with the size of their elk herds

Apparently, they have habitat for more, but since most of the herds are on private land they want to keep the herd sizes as they are to minimize conflict with crops. They actually allow elk hunting - they could just issue fewer permits this year to make up for this one that they shot. So it was probably the right decision - the value of one new animal in the herd doesn't outweigh the risk of CWD.

[Trailmix]

13. Looking for Outdoor / Environmental News Sources

Hello

This is my first post to Democratic Underground. This is a little off topic and I may be breaking a rule here... Please understand, I mean no disrespect.

I am currently collecting op/ed links to environmental news sources to post on a web page that I am building. The page isn't really political in nature, but I want to build a decent Op/Ed section. I was hoping to pull from the brain trust of this board.

Thanks in advance...

the website is http://www.trailmix.net