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State law puts end to testing deer, elk By MARK FREEMAN State wildlife officials on Friday abandoned emergency plans to kill 450 deer and elk this winter as part of a tuberculosis test in northeastern Oregon after learning their method would run afoul of the law. A 1973 statute bans killing big-game animals by shooting them from the air, as Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists had planned. Unlike most fish and wildlife statutes, this law does not exempt biologists doing research work. A state Department of Justice review unearthed the legal technicality Friday, less than two weeks before the tuberculosis sampling was to begin around the Grant County ranch where a pen-raised elk died of tuberculosis in November. "We've wanted to be extremely scientific and extremely professional about this," ODFW spokeswoman Anne Pressentin Young said Friday. "And to do that, we have to follow the law." The only avenue for an exemption, Pressentin Young said, is through the Oregon Legislature. Friday's revelation trashes the agency's most effective way to quickly test whether the highly infectious disease is present among the wild deer and elk now preparing to fan out across the region toward their summer ranges. Biologists now likely will rely on a combination of collecting road-kills, checking hunter-killed animals and possibly adding new hunts to garner enough Rocky Mountain elk and mule deer for the study. "It could take months," Pressentin Young said. "Definitely, in a year from now, we could still be in the sampling effort." Scrapping the aerial-gunning plan relieves department critics such as Scott Atkinson of Medford, who co-owns a hunting camp in the region. Atkinson believes the planned killing of 300 deer and 150 elk would harm the herds more than a tuberculosis outbreak. "That was overkill," Atkinson said. "If you found out your neighbor had TB, would you then go out and kill half the others on your street to see if you have a TB problem?" In 2000, sport-hunters killed 778 deer and 670 elk in the entire Northside Management Unit, which includes vast territory around the area planned for tuberculosis testing. A cow elk that died Nov. 17 at the Rudio Creek Ranch was diagnosed with the bovine strain of tuberculosis. It can infect most mammals and can be spread through the air or by sharing food and water sources. The elk was certified by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as tuberculosis-free in Colorado last year before it was shipped to the ranch near Monument. The penned elk could have come into contact with wild elk through a fence. The fear is that one or more wild elk, and to a lesser extent deer, were infected and could then set the disease spiraling through wild herds. The only reliable tuberculosis test for wild animals calls for the animals to be killed so their lungs and lymph nodes can be checked for the disease. Tuberculosis never has been found in Oregon wildlife and there currently is no evidence that it is present. ODFW biologists will be in Medford Thursday for a meeting in which they will update and explain the saga to concerned residents. That meeting is set for 7 p.m. at the Jackson County Courthouse Auditorium, at the corner of West Eighth Street and Oakdale Avenue. Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.