Brucellosis Infests Yellowstone Ungulates
Brucellosis is a bacterial disease carried by livestock and capable of infecting people. Tainted milk or meat causes undulant fever and inflammation of the joints, spinal column, and heart. Brucellosis was a serious problem prior to World War I, but antibiotics (Strain-19 vaccine) had largely eliminated the disease in U.S. livestock by 1997.
There is one spot where Brucellosis lingers: Yellowstone National Park. Bison and elk in YNP still carry the disease, and those migrating animals are still spreading it to ranches in Montana.
The YNP Brucellosis story has been artfully reported by journalist Dave Skinner in the Spring 2008 issue of Range Magazine. And Range editor C.J. Hadley has generously put the story, Buffaloed in Paradise, online for the free reading pleasure and education of the public [here].
Range Magazine consistently prints the stories most important to the rural West, written by the top journalists in the West, and is always ahead of the pack. Buffaloed in Paradise is no exception.
Skinner weaves a tale that includes the tragic but necessary destruction of entire cattle herds, the severe economic losses, and the suffering of ranch families unfortunate enough to be caught in the epidemic YNP has spread. He correctly identifies the scientifically absurd “natural regulation” policy that has led to much destruction of wildlife and vegetation in Yellowstone.
Haughty NPS managers have for decades ignored science in favor of superstition and pre-Darwinian bogosities in their mismanagement of America’s flagship National Park. The results of their Disney-esque foppery include the million-acre 1988 Yellowstone Fire, destruction of the prairies and forests of Yellowstone, and the infection of cattle ranches 100 miles or more from the Park.
YNP has also been the staging center for “reintroduction” of wolves that have wandered across four or five states and caused massive livestock and wildlife losses. Wyoming, Montana, and Idaho state governments are up in arms over the problems caused and emanating from the most mismanaged Park in America today (that’s saying a lot because parks like the Grand Canyon and Yosemite are in terrible shape).
From Buffaloed in Paradise:
Yet something rings especially false about NPS’s obstinacy: its natural regulation policy implies that native species and their interactions reign supreme. Brucella abortus, however, is neither native nor natural. It’s a virulent infectious organism, native to the Levantine regions of the eastern Mediterranean, where its debilitating effects on both livestock and humans likely had a major role in establishing Hebrew kosher and Islamic halal rules concerning meat and milk.
One would expect the Park Service to spare no effort in banishing an exotic disease from its natural realm, but instead the park deliberately and nonsensically quit managing the disease-40 years ago.
For the entire article and more from Range Magazine, see [here].
