Snowy Owl
Retired in 2010, In Memoriam
Gruesome work keeps FWP on top of wildlife disease
Technicians testing deer to see if chronic wasting disease is present in state
By MIKE STARK
Of The Gazette Staff
http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/12/15/news/state/18-animalcontrol_v.txt
BOZEMAN - Leave your weak stomach at home if you visit Neil Anderson at work.
The smell of dead animals is thick inside the examination room at the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks' wildlife laboratory. On one recent morning, an 83-pound dead wolf hung from a rope waiting for a necropsy near a heaping pile of mule deer heads to be tested for chronic wasting disease.
"You can't be queasy," said Anderson, the lab's director.
But those who can handle it are on the front lines of tracking some of the biggest threats to Montana's wildlife: chronic wasting disease, avian flu, West Nile virus, bluetongue, brucellosis and other diseases.
One or two decades ago, there was fairly short list of diseases affecting wildlife.
Today, FWP is bustling with full- and part-time workers in the lab and in the field looking for a growing number of harmful bugs, viruses and diseases.
Several factors are changing the dynamics of wildlife diseases. People and animals are living in closer proximity; habitat is chopped up by roads and development, making it more difficult for wildlife to find relief from disease outbreaks; and several diseases have emerged that move quickly and infect previously unexposed animals.
Disease trackers keep an eye out for the ones they know about and anything else that looks suspicious.
"There are things coming down the pike that we probably don't even know about," said Jeff Herbert, assistant chief of the wildlife division at FWP.
These days, chronic wasting disease gets much of the attention.
The disease attacks the brains of infected deer and elk, causing them to become emaciated, act abnormally and eventually die. Exactly how it spreads remains unclear.
The disease is in Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, parts of Canada and elsewhere in North America.
Since 1998, 12,000 animals in Montana have been tested for the disease - including more than 1,400 this year - but it hasn't shown up yet in the wild deer and elk populations.
"Every year we're a little bit surprised that we haven't found it yet," Anderson said.
Looking for it is painstaking work.
Located just a few blocks west of Montana State University, FWP's wildlife lab is set off behind the agency's Region 3 headquarters.
The single-story building holds a series of offices and the examination room, which includes access to a large walk-in freezer where animal carcasses are stored.
On a recent morning, technicians Tom Everett and Jen Williams spent hours at a stainless-steel table processing dozens of mule deer heads in search of chronic wasting disease.
The best way is to extract lymph nodes, kidney-bean-sized lumps where the agent that causes the disease tends to congregate. Technicians at the wildlife lab also cut out brain tissue called the obex, which also stores evidence of the disease.
The lymph nodes are packaged up and mailed to a lab at Colorado State University, where a $17 test determines if chronic wasting disease is present.
It's possible that chronic wasting disease will arrive in Montana by way of Wyoming, where 102 cases have been found this year, mostly in the southeast corner that's long been a hot spot for the disease.
In recent years, it has been creeping toward Montana and Yellowstone National Park. Last month, chronic wasting disease turned up in two new hunting areas in Wyoming's Bighorn Basin, one near Lovell and another southwest of Worland.
Wyoming, like Montana, conducts intensive testing for the disease in the hopes of documenting how it may be moving. It's also possible that the disease isn't really moving but that new cases are being picked up in areas that haven't been tested before.
"By doing that we can say, yeah, it's probably moving but it's hard to say for sure," said Hank Edwards, wildlife disease specialist at the Wyoming lab in Laramie. "Chances are it's probably moving to the north and west."
With no proven and effective tests on live animals available, wildlife officials are left to rely on testing dead animals and paying particularly close attention to places where they think chronic wasting disease might show up.
"It's one of those insidious diseases that just kind of festers out there," Anderson said.
Disease officials, though, can't afford to just keep an eye out for chronic wasting disease.
When FWP took over management of wolves in Montana, the agency began examining every wolf that showed up dead, whether from natural causes or otherwise.
On the day Everett and Williams were looking over deer heads, veterinarian Deborah McCauley was examining a female wolf killed near Eureka in August. The wolf had apparently been going after livestock and was shot and killed by wildlife managers.
A necropsy is conducted for each wolf brought in, including collection of a DNA sample and screening for diseases such as mange and echinococcus, a malady potentially dangerous to canines and people.
The rest of the exam is fairly routine, although a few oddities turn up in the wolves' stomachs. McCauley said she once found a porcupine alongside a plastic bag in one.
Those strange occurrences reinforce the need to expect the unexpected, even the dangerous.
Last month, a biologist at Grand Canyon National Park died, apparently after being exposed to plague while examining a dead mountain lion.
It was a good reminder to take protections while slicing apart wildlife at Montana's wildlife lab, Anderson said.
"You can't be complacent," he said.
That's especially true in an age when diseases travel around the globe faster than ever.
FWP hired a full-time wildlife veterinarian a few years ago and has ramped up its disease surveillance with the help of federal funds.
It's all part of a heightened regional emphasis on wildlife disease.
Last year, Yellowstone National Park officials signed an agreement with Montana State University and the University of California-Davis to track existing and anticipated wildlife diseases in Yellowstone.
Wildlife officials are learning to be flexible, look for diseases in unexpected places and stay up on emerging diseases like avian flu and chronic wasting disease.
"A number of years ago, none of those were on the radar screen," Herbert said.
Published on Saturday, December 15, 2007
Technicians testing deer to see if chronic wasting disease is present in state
By MIKE STARK
Of The Gazette Staff
http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2007/12/15/news/state/18-animalcontrol_v.txt
BOZEMAN - Leave your weak stomach at home if you visit Neil Anderson at work.
The smell of dead animals is thick inside the examination room at the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks' wildlife laboratory. On one recent morning, an 83-pound dead wolf hung from a rope waiting for a necropsy near a heaping pile of mule deer heads to be tested for chronic wasting disease.
"You can't be queasy," said Anderson, the lab's director.
But those who can handle it are on the front lines of tracking some of the biggest threats to Montana's wildlife: chronic wasting disease, avian flu, West Nile virus, bluetongue, brucellosis and other diseases.
One or two decades ago, there was fairly short list of diseases affecting wildlife.
Today, FWP is bustling with full- and part-time workers in the lab and in the field looking for a growing number of harmful bugs, viruses and diseases.
Several factors are changing the dynamics of wildlife diseases. People and animals are living in closer proximity; habitat is chopped up by roads and development, making it more difficult for wildlife to find relief from disease outbreaks; and several diseases have emerged that move quickly and infect previously unexposed animals.
Disease trackers keep an eye out for the ones they know about and anything else that looks suspicious.
"There are things coming down the pike that we probably don't even know about," said Jeff Herbert, assistant chief of the wildlife division at FWP.
These days, chronic wasting disease gets much of the attention.
The disease attacks the brains of infected deer and elk, causing them to become emaciated, act abnormally and eventually die. Exactly how it spreads remains unclear.
The disease is in Colorado, Wyoming, South Dakota, parts of Canada and elsewhere in North America.
Since 1998, 12,000 animals in Montana have been tested for the disease - including more than 1,400 this year - but it hasn't shown up yet in the wild deer and elk populations.
"Every year we're a little bit surprised that we haven't found it yet," Anderson said.
Looking for it is painstaking work.
Located just a few blocks west of Montana State University, FWP's wildlife lab is set off behind the agency's Region 3 headquarters.
The single-story building holds a series of offices and the examination room, which includes access to a large walk-in freezer where animal carcasses are stored.
On a recent morning, technicians Tom Everett and Jen Williams spent hours at a stainless-steel table processing dozens of mule deer heads in search of chronic wasting disease.
The best way is to extract lymph nodes, kidney-bean-sized lumps where the agent that causes the disease tends to congregate. Technicians at the wildlife lab also cut out brain tissue called the obex, which also stores evidence of the disease.
The lymph nodes are packaged up and mailed to a lab at Colorado State University, where a $17 test determines if chronic wasting disease is present.
It's possible that chronic wasting disease will arrive in Montana by way of Wyoming, where 102 cases have been found this year, mostly in the southeast corner that's long been a hot spot for the disease.
In recent years, it has been creeping toward Montana and Yellowstone National Park. Last month, chronic wasting disease turned up in two new hunting areas in Wyoming's Bighorn Basin, one near Lovell and another southwest of Worland.
Wyoming, like Montana, conducts intensive testing for the disease in the hopes of documenting how it may be moving. It's also possible that the disease isn't really moving but that new cases are being picked up in areas that haven't been tested before.
"By doing that we can say, yeah, it's probably moving but it's hard to say for sure," said Hank Edwards, wildlife disease specialist at the Wyoming lab in Laramie. "Chances are it's probably moving to the north and west."
With no proven and effective tests on live animals available, wildlife officials are left to rely on testing dead animals and paying particularly close attention to places where they think chronic wasting disease might show up.
"It's one of those insidious diseases that just kind of festers out there," Anderson said.
Disease officials, though, can't afford to just keep an eye out for chronic wasting disease.
When FWP took over management of wolves in Montana, the agency began examining every wolf that showed up dead, whether from natural causes or otherwise.
On the day Everett and Williams were looking over deer heads, veterinarian Deborah McCauley was examining a female wolf killed near Eureka in August. The wolf had apparently been going after livestock and was shot and killed by wildlife managers.
A necropsy is conducted for each wolf brought in, including collection of a DNA sample and screening for diseases such as mange and echinococcus, a malady potentially dangerous to canines and people.
The rest of the exam is fairly routine, although a few oddities turn up in the wolves' stomachs. McCauley said she once found a porcupine alongside a plastic bag in one.
Those strange occurrences reinforce the need to expect the unexpected, even the dangerous.
Last month, a biologist at Grand Canyon National Park died, apparently after being exposed to plague while examining a dead mountain lion.
It was a good reminder to take protections while slicing apart wildlife at Montana's wildlife lab, Anderson said.
"You can't be complacent," he said.
That's especially true in an age when diseases travel around the globe faster than ever.
FWP hired a full-time wildlife veterinarian a few years ago and has ramped up its disease surveillance with the help of federal funds.
It's all part of a heightened regional emphasis on wildlife disease.
Last year, Yellowstone National Park officials signed an agreement with Montana State University and the University of California-Davis to track existing and anticipated wildlife diseases in Yellowstone.
Wildlife officials are learning to be flexible, look for diseases in unexpected places and stay up on emerging diseases like avian flu and chronic wasting disease.
"A number of years ago, none of those were on the radar screen," Herbert said.
Published on Saturday, December 15, 2007