A vaccine research provision in the recently passed farm bill has some folks worried that it could be used to fund ill-considered disease eradication programs in elk populations . . .
Some wildlife advocates worry a considerably rewritten wildlife disease provision in the final version of the federal farm bill will make it much harder to track livestock agencies’ efforts to control wild elk…
…[A] section called the Competitive, Special and Facilities Research Grant Act included a line calling for vaccine research to control “pests and diseases (especially zoonotic diseases) in wildlife reservoirs presenting a potential concern to public health or domestic livestock and pests and diseases in minor species (including deer, elk and bison).” That goes into a grant program authorized to spend about $3.5 billion over five years.
The problem, according to people like Glenn Hockett of the Gallatin Wildlife Association, is whether some of those grants will go toward the eradication of brucellosis in wildlife. Attempting to do so could devastate Montana’s wild elk herds without much benefit to its cattle industry, he said.