WEBVTT - Ep. 070: Chronic Wasting Disease 0:00:08.960 --> 0:00:13.320 This is me eater podcast coming at you shirtless, severely 0:00:13.480 --> 0:00:18.360 bug bitten and in my case, underwear listening podcast. You 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:31.240 can't predict anything. So we're joined by a special guest, um, 0:00:31.280 --> 0:00:36.280 Brian Richards. That's right, right, you've got it with the 0:00:36.400 --> 0:00:40.040 U s g S, the United States Geologic Survey and 0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:44.360 at the National Wildlife Health Center at the National Wildlife 0:00:44.360 --> 0:00:49.000 Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin. Now, just to just to 0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:51.640 start the most basic thing, because we're talking about wildlife disease, 0:00:51.720 --> 0:00:56.120 particularly chronic waste disease. But um, how how does the 0:00:56.240 --> 0:00:58.760 how how does the how does wildlife disease sort of 0:00:58.800 --> 0:01:04.880 fall under the under the bailiwick, you know? Or uh, 0:01:05.120 --> 0:01:08.240 how's the USGS tangled up in that? Because instead of 0:01:08.240 --> 0:01:09.880 because I would hear that when I was younger, and 0:01:09.920 --> 0:01:12.960 I would think that the USGS mapped mineral deposits and 0:01:14.240 --> 0:01:17.760 U s GS is formally known as the Science Wing 0:01:18.080 --> 0:01:21.640 or the Science Bureau in the Department of the Interior. Okay, 0:01:22.680 --> 0:01:26.800 But the National Wildlife Health Center originated back in Fishing 0:01:26.840 --> 0:01:31.200 Wildlife Service, and we were removed from Fishing Wildlife Service 0:01:31.400 --> 0:01:35.520 and moved over eventually into into U s g S 0:01:35.560 --> 0:01:39.880 as part of that larger conglomerate of science. So USGS 0:01:39.959 --> 0:01:45.960 does a lot of different things, earthquake monitoring, volcanoes, natural hazards. UM. 0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:49.559 There's a water science center virtually in every state that 0:01:49.560 --> 0:01:52.800 that deals with water issues. But we also do UH 0:01:53.080 --> 0:01:58.720 issues in in UM environmental health biology. So it's kind 0:01:58.720 --> 0:02:01.880 of interesting with the National Wildlife Health Center is we 0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:05.800 are a very a national center, so we deal with 0:02:05.920 --> 0:02:10.480 wildlife health issues across the country and internationally as well. 0:02:10.919 --> 0:02:14.160 Our main campus being in Madison, Wisconsin. We have a 0:02:14.200 --> 0:02:18.240 satellite UM in Honolulu, Hawaii. You know, I've been trying 0:02:18.240 --> 0:02:20.880 for the last twelve years to get relocated out there, 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:23.760 but you know, so far, so far it hasn't worked. Yeah, 0:02:23.840 --> 0:02:25.800 and you grew up here. You grew up here in Wisconsin, 0:02:26.040 --> 0:02:28.600 I did. I grew up just uh, just maybe an 0:02:28.639 --> 0:02:30.960 hour hour and a half northwest of where we are now, 0:02:31.000 --> 0:02:34.760 on a dairy farm, and and so really spent the 0:02:34.800 --> 0:02:37.880 better part of my life living you know, outdoors and 0:02:38.000 --> 0:02:40.600 enjoying hunting and fishing, you know, just like you know, 0:02:40.760 --> 0:02:43.200 very similar to the property we're on here today. Just 0:02:43.240 --> 0:02:46.160 a fantastic place to grow up, and then spent some 0:02:46.200 --> 0:02:49.239 time in Texas. I did. Um, after I got done 0:02:49.280 --> 0:02:52.280 with grad school. Uh, you know, you're you're poor, you 0:02:52.360 --> 0:02:55.760 need a job, and uh you start centering out applications 0:02:55.800 --> 0:02:59.200 in and Texas Parks and Wildlife Department. You know, for 0:02:59.240 --> 0:03:02.560 whatever reason, decided to entertain me down there for about 0:03:02.560 --> 0:03:05.600 eleven years. Uh. So I worked at the headquarters for 0:03:05.639 --> 0:03:09.520 Parks and Wildlife in in big game management. UH learned 0:03:09.520 --> 0:03:13.440 a lot. Texas is a very fascinating place. Um. You know, 0:03:13.480 --> 0:03:17.639 from an ecological perspective, I think there's ten distinct ecological 0:03:17.680 --> 0:03:20.800 regions in the state of Texas. There's something very neat 0:03:20.960 --> 0:03:25.080 about virtually every one of them. Uh, Texas being so large, Uh, 0:03:25.360 --> 0:03:27.480 you know when I was there, you know, we figured 0:03:27.520 --> 0:03:30.400 it was about fourteen hours from east to west, you know, 0:03:30.440 --> 0:03:34.200 from Houston Dale Passo and probably about fourteen hours drive 0:03:34.240 --> 0:03:37.760 from Brownsville up to Amarilla. So, you know, just a 0:03:37.840 --> 0:03:42.400 tremendous space. But game management there is a lot of fun. 0:03:42.840 --> 0:03:45.040 Uh there you're dealing with you know, white tailed deer 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:47.080 the premier. But you get out in West Texas, you've 0:03:47.080 --> 0:03:49.680 got mule deer, You've got pronghorn antelope, you've got elk 0:03:49.760 --> 0:03:52.720 and a few places. So a lot of diversity, and 0:03:52.840 --> 0:03:55.280 you have you know, desert big horn sheep that the 0:03:55.400 --> 0:03:59.040 state has spent a lot of time and effort restoring sheep, 0:03:59.080 --> 0:04:01.720 putting them back on mountains in in parts of Texas 0:04:01.800 --> 0:04:05.840 and fantastic place. That's the way off subject. But how's 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:08.520 that project going? Do you still follow that? I keep 0:04:08.560 --> 0:04:13.520 track of of bighorn sheep in general from a disease perspective, 0:04:13.600 --> 0:04:17.720 and uh, and disease is a very prominent issue in 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:21.960 a in a limiting issue for sheep management across North America. 0:04:22.200 --> 0:04:26.960 It's always pneumonia. It's a pneumonia complex and when you 0:04:27.200 --> 0:04:30.640 when you look at the causative factors, it links back 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:36.000 to domestic sheep virtually every time. And the states realize that. 0:04:36.240 --> 0:04:39.480 And you know, if you want to boil it down, 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:43.920 if you put desert sheep in the same space or time, 0:04:44.360 --> 0:04:48.400 you know with domestic sheep, the wild sheep are gonna die. 0:04:48.600 --> 0:04:52.640 You're gonna lose them. It's pretty It's that simple. So there, 0:04:52.680 --> 0:04:55.600 you know, sheep management is like a lot of other species. 0:04:55.600 --> 0:04:59.240 Management obviously need habitat, you know, you need you need 0:04:59.320 --> 0:05:02.760 spaces or them. You might need to engage in some 0:05:02.800 --> 0:05:05.960 sort of predator control early on to get them established. 0:05:06.320 --> 0:05:09.120 But disease is the limiting factor when it comes to 0:05:09.200 --> 0:05:12.400 sheep pretty much across their range. Uh, there's a few 0:05:12.400 --> 0:05:18.599 places where, um, where state management agencies, game management agencies 0:05:19.600 --> 0:05:24.240 identify that there is contact, physical contact or close contact 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:27.240 between domestic sheep and the wild sheep, they'll go out 0:05:27.240 --> 0:05:29.800 and they'll take a herd off a mountain just because 0:05:30.120 --> 0:05:32.920 they realize the disease. If it gets engaged, you know, 0:05:33.040 --> 0:05:35.960 embedded in that herd on one mountain, it will spread 0:05:35.960 --> 0:05:40.400 from there. So, you know, pretty dramatic, sounds pretty draconian, 0:05:40.839 --> 0:05:43.359 but in order to keep sheep out out there, you know, 0:05:43.400 --> 0:05:47.080 we have to do some pretty pretty harsh things. Now 0:05:47.600 --> 0:05:51.200 with the big horn thing, with the desert big horns 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:55.600 in Texas, how many are there in Texas? It's a 0:05:55.680 --> 0:05:59.039 great question, do you all? You know, I have like 0:05:59.120 --> 0:06:02.240 this very like like this hunter centric way I look 0:06:02.279 --> 0:06:04.120 at it. I know, I think they give out a 0:06:04.360 --> 0:06:09.320 tag right there, a big orange tag. It's pretty limited. Yeah, 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:13.400 So there's probably a few hundred desert sheep. Um. Some 0:06:13.560 --> 0:06:15.600 of those are gonna be on public land and some 0:06:15.640 --> 0:06:17.840 of them are going to be on private land. So 0:06:17.880 --> 0:06:22.680 the state manages you know, pretty tight, you know, hunting access, 0:06:22.800 --> 0:06:27.080 trying to afford you know, the the great opportunity, and 0:06:27.160 --> 0:06:29.479 so I think, you know, I don't keep traffic because 0:06:29.480 --> 0:06:31.840 I haven't been in Texas for you know, twelve thirteen 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:36.400 years so since I've been down there and engaged in management. 0:06:37.120 --> 0:06:39.120 But at that point in time, it seems like we 0:06:39.120 --> 0:06:43.920 were harvesting, giving way or allocating opportunities to harvest two 0:06:44.000 --> 0:06:48.240 or three rams per year, and they were great opportunities. Uh, 0:06:48.279 --> 0:06:50.680 the neat thing, and I'm not sure if they're still 0:06:50.760 --> 0:06:52.320 doing it. They called it, I think it was called 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:55.840 the Big Time Texas Hunts and people could enter into 0:06:55.880 --> 0:07:01.240 a drawing and the winner got a whitetail hunt, a 0:07:01.320 --> 0:07:05.160 mule deer hunt, a prong horn hunt, and a desert 0:07:05.200 --> 0:07:08.440 big horn ram hunt. And they were all quality. They 0:07:08.440 --> 0:07:12.360 weren't guaranteed hunts. They were quality hunts. You had all 0:07:12.680 --> 0:07:15.760 that hit all at once, you had you had to work, yeah, 0:07:15.800 --> 0:07:18.000 but the people that won that that was like, you know, 0:07:18.040 --> 0:07:21.400 from a from a big game hunting standpoint, and how 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:23.480 could you do any better than that? You know, you 0:07:23.520 --> 0:07:27.920 mentioned predator control ahead of some of the reintroductions they've 0:07:27.960 --> 0:07:30.280 done with those. I remember man A long time ago 0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:34.200 when I was uh, I used to do a bit 0:07:34.240 --> 0:07:36.120 of fur trapping, and I was reading an article and 0:07:36.120 --> 0:07:38.560 Trapper and Predator Color magazine, and it was the article 0:07:38.680 --> 0:07:41.080 something like the five hundred thousand dollar Lion, and it 0:07:41.120 --> 0:07:44.920 was about they did a reintroduction, you know, and moved 0:07:44.920 --> 0:07:47.240 in a bunch of sheep into this area, and then 0:07:47.320 --> 0:07:53.400 a single lion systematically like eliminated the whole reintroduction. And 0:07:53.520 --> 0:07:55.400 so he got he picked up the name of what 0:07:55.440 --> 0:07:59.800 that whole project cost. Well, when you think about it, 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:03.080 you know, you're you're putting sheep on the mountain side 0:08:03.120 --> 0:08:07.120 that they're not familiar with, and that cat is familiar 0:08:07.160 --> 0:08:12.160 with every nook and cranny, every water opportunity, every ambush spot, 0:08:12.520 --> 0:08:16.320 you know, on that mountain side. So who's got the advantage. Yeah, 0:08:16.320 --> 0:08:18.320 he just thinks a bunch of weirdos moved into town 0:08:18.320 --> 0:08:22.520 who are like very easy to kill. Yeah, So I 0:08:22.520 --> 0:08:25.000 can you know, I could really see there's a place 0:08:25.080 --> 0:08:29.440 for predator management early on, you know, to help those herds. 0:08:29.480 --> 0:08:31.360 If you're going to go to the effort of trying 0:08:31.440 --> 0:08:34.840 to re establish those sheep on that mountain side, it 0:08:34.920 --> 0:08:36.760 does it kind of makes sense. To try and give 0:08:36.800 --> 0:08:40.000 them the best opportunity they can. But once they're once 0:08:40.000 --> 0:08:42.760 they're established, once those sheep know what's going on. I mean, 0:08:42.800 --> 0:08:46.120 they evolved with predators, so we don't we don't have to, 0:08:46.400 --> 0:08:49.040 you know, eliminate predators in order to have you know, 0:08:49.160 --> 0:08:52.640 sheep on the mountain side. But maybe adding a little 0:08:52.640 --> 0:08:56.480 bit of balance early on seems pretty reasonable. So from 0:08:56.520 --> 0:08:59.280 Texas you moved up here to Wisconsin. I did. I 0:08:59.280 --> 0:09:02.480 moved back home. Yeah, it was the How long is 0:09:02.520 --> 0:09:06.000 the tell me get I'm sorry? The wildlife disease was 0:09:06.000 --> 0:09:09.080 was the National Wildlife Health Center? The National Wildlife Health Center? 0:09:09.240 --> 0:09:12.080 How long has that been in Madison? Uh? Since its 0:09:12.120 --> 0:09:16.000 inception back in the back in the nineties seventies when 0:09:16.040 --> 0:09:19.120 it us put together and so we just hit uh, 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:21.600 you know, it's over forty years the center has been. 0:09:21.679 --> 0:09:24.679 It started out on the u W Madison campus and 0:09:24.720 --> 0:09:27.440 then we moved out into our facilities on the southwest 0:09:27.520 --> 0:09:29.480 side of Madison. Now we've been there quite a while. 0:09:30.000 --> 0:09:32.120 How many this might be hard to This might be 0:09:32.120 --> 0:09:33.880 hard to answer, but if you have to take a 0:09:33.920 --> 0:09:41.600 ball apart, how many um wildlife diseases are are being 0:09:41.640 --> 0:09:44.720 looked at or are of interest to you and your colleagues. 0:09:45.040 --> 0:09:47.040 I mean, is it is it like over a dozen 0:09:47.240 --> 0:09:50.640 or yeah, I mean if you had the ballpark it. Well, 0:09:51.040 --> 0:09:56.520 we're interested in anything that results in mortality events in wildlife. 0:09:56.920 --> 0:09:59.960 So we don't really look at the single cardinal that's 0:10:00.080 --> 0:10:03.600 land outside the plate glass window because probably pretty obvious 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:07.040 what happened there. But people are our partners, and our 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:12.800 partners being states, other federal agencies, tribal partners report mortality 0:10:12.920 --> 0:10:16.760 and morbidity UM sick or dead events to us, and 0:10:16.800 --> 0:10:19.480 that's when we get engaged and we try and help 0:10:19.600 --> 0:10:24.400 understand what the causative agent was, what caused that mortality event. 0:10:25.120 --> 0:10:27.160 We've been doing that for a long time, but when 0:10:27.200 --> 0:10:30.559 it in so that's a very important part of our 0:10:30.600 --> 0:10:33.400 work because our partners rely on us to be able 0:10:33.400 --> 0:10:36.440 to tell them what's going on and maybe parlay that 0:10:36.520 --> 0:10:40.120 into some management information. But then the deeper we go, 0:10:40.640 --> 0:10:44.640 we try and learn and conduct scientific activities research to 0:10:44.760 --> 0:10:49.880 learn more about the ecological conditions that lead to disease, okay, 0:10:49.920 --> 0:10:55.400 and then beyond that start working into, where possible, into 0:10:55.559 --> 0:10:59.720 mechanisms that might be able to help prevent or mitigate 0:10:59.760 --> 0:11:03.480 the effects of disease. UM. You know you mentioned kind 0:11:03.480 --> 0:11:06.360 of a number. I guess over the course of time 0:11:06.559 --> 0:11:11.120 there have been maybe twenty big you know, disease issues 0:11:11.160 --> 0:11:13.760 that we have seen that we have worked on, you know, 0:11:13.840 --> 0:11:16.080 some of the recent ones. Uh, you know, we'll talk 0:11:16.120 --> 0:11:20.520 about chronic wasting disease today. UM. Not too long after 0:11:20.600 --> 0:11:23.439 c w D we got involved with it, what is 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:27.959 now called white nose syndrome and bats. Uh. Pretty interesting disease, 0:11:28.000 --> 0:11:32.160 a fungal disease that it's one of the rare diseases 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:38.600 in wildlife that truly can in part population level impacts. Okay, Um, 0:11:38.640 --> 0:11:43.440 if you look at caves or hybernacular where white nose 0:11:43.480 --> 0:11:50.000 syndrome has become established, we see regularly ninety population declines 0:11:50.080 --> 0:11:54.920 in those hybernacular and that disease is moved quite clearly 0:11:54.960 --> 0:11:58.040 from east to west. And I believe it's been picked 0:11:58.120 --> 0:12:02.000 up now in about twenty six states. So, um and 0:12:02.040 --> 0:12:05.600 having pretty significant impacts. Is it lethal to a lot 0:12:05.640 --> 0:12:11.120 of species of bats. Um, it's pretty much isolated to 0:12:11.280 --> 0:12:16.199 those species of bats which hibernate in caves. Okay, you 0:12:16.280 --> 0:12:20.520 need appropriate conditions for the fungus. It's a cold loving fungus. 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:25.400 So it prospers in these hibernacular be they um traditional 0:12:25.480 --> 0:12:30.480 caves where bats are are hibernating, and sometimes in artificial 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:38.400 where minds things like that hibernacular is a cave that 0:12:38.400 --> 0:12:42.560 that they hibernate in, you bet, and this is there's 0:12:42.559 --> 0:12:46.080 something to do with that one where UM they feel 0:12:46.120 --> 0:12:48.839 that some of that spread is coming from humans going 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:52.480 into caves. That's a you hear about that. That's a 0:12:52.520 --> 0:12:58.600 consistent feature with disease in general. Certainly, we we expect 0:12:58.640 --> 0:13:02.520 that bat to bat movement of disease occurs with white 0:13:02.559 --> 0:13:06.800 nose syndrome. But there's also a possibility that cavers spelunkers 0:13:07.360 --> 0:13:10.760 UM with their equipment, could be moving that fungus, that 0:13:10.840 --> 0:13:15.440 infectious material from cave to cave. So part of the 0:13:15.480 --> 0:13:20.120 management's UM scenario being enacted by states and federal agencies 0:13:20.679 --> 0:13:27.079 is limiting access to caves and also encouraging UM spelunkers 0:13:27.200 --> 0:13:31.240 cavers to thoroughly decontaminate all their equipment. Um. You know, 0:13:31.280 --> 0:13:33.760 if you're crawling, you know, in through a cave, I 0:13:33.800 --> 0:13:37.160 mean you're in muck, and you know you look like 0:13:37.200 --> 0:13:40.040 you've been crawling in a cave. And so certainly if 0:13:40.080 --> 0:13:43.720 the if the fungus responsible for white noses in one cave, 0:13:43.880 --> 0:13:46.400 you come out of that, there's a high likelihood that 0:13:46.440 --> 0:13:50.280 you've got contamination on your ropes, on your gear, on you. 0:13:50.800 --> 0:13:53.640 And so if the next day you go, you know, 0:13:53.760 --> 0:13:56.840 three or four miles to another cave, go in there 0:13:56.840 --> 0:14:00.480 with the same equipment, it's easy to understand and how 0:14:00.559 --> 0:14:05.000 you might be moving infectious material. And it certainly looks 0:14:05.040 --> 0:14:08.920 like most of the movement of white nose syndrome is 0:14:08.920 --> 0:14:11.760 associated with that bat to bat to. That movement is 0:14:12.000 --> 0:14:16.839 a gradual movement, yep. But now a year ago white 0:14:16.840 --> 0:14:20.200 nose popped up in the state of Washington. It's a 0:14:20.280 --> 0:14:22.520 long ways from you know, the most you know, the 0:14:22.520 --> 0:14:26.040 other closest closest places. So you've got to ask a 0:14:26.160 --> 0:14:29.000 question how did it get there? And you could go 0:14:29.040 --> 0:14:32.160 back to the original question, how did you know the 0:14:32.480 --> 0:14:36.800 fungus get to North America? Turns out that this fungus 0:14:36.840 --> 0:14:39.960 has been in Europe for probably for a long time, 0:14:40.320 --> 0:14:43.800 and uh, the hybernacular there the caves where the bats 0:14:43.840 --> 0:14:46.960 are there seemed to be in general maybe lower densities 0:14:46.960 --> 0:14:51.880 of bats, and so a balance has created over time 0:14:52.480 --> 0:14:57.000 where the disease doesn't manifest in in large mortality in 0:14:57.040 --> 0:15:01.160 the European bats. Uh. Now, somehow that fungus got brought 0:15:01.200 --> 0:15:04.560 over to this side of the large pond and got 0:15:04.600 --> 0:15:09.120 into hybernacular cave systems where we have these incredible densities 0:15:09.160 --> 0:15:11.640 of you know, tens of thousands of bats, you know, 0:15:11.760 --> 0:15:14.880 congregated in the wintertime. Put a little bit of fungus 0:15:14.880 --> 0:15:18.080 in there. The bats are hanging in there for literally 0:15:18.120 --> 0:15:20.200 hanging in there, I guess, over the over the course 0:15:20.240 --> 0:15:22.800 of the winter, and it provides an opportunity for that 0:15:22.840 --> 0:15:25.200 fungus to move back to back to bat to bat 0:15:25.720 --> 0:15:30.440 in that colony. Then in summertime those bats may commingle 0:15:30.560 --> 0:15:33.960 with bats, or they are coming from other hybernacular or 0:15:34.000 --> 0:15:36.800 than they may in fact themselves spend the next winter 0:15:37.240 --> 0:15:40.080 in the next hybernacular. And so you can see how 0:15:40.080 --> 0:15:43.280 that fungus has an opportunity to move. But it's long 0:15:43.360 --> 0:15:47.560 as the fungus take to be fatal, probably most of 0:15:48.240 --> 0:15:50.560 in this is not my area of expertise, but I'm 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:54.320 gonna say probably most of the winner. Um. So, if 0:15:54.360 --> 0:15:56.960 the fungus is in a cave, it's going to get 0:15:57.000 --> 0:15:59.840 on a bat soon after, you know, they move in 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:04.040 for you know, for hibernation season, and then you know, 0:16:04.480 --> 0:16:07.200 I think we see most of the mortality kind of 0:16:07.240 --> 0:16:10.000 in the debt of winter the bats. The bats will 0:16:10.040 --> 0:16:12.360 sometimes die in the cave. Some of them will die 0:16:12.440 --> 0:16:14.840 in the cave. Um. Another thing that one of the 0:16:14.840 --> 0:16:19.880 things that people observe is um. You know, bats flying 0:16:19.920 --> 0:16:23.800 around in the debt of winter. Okay, when those bats 0:16:23.840 --> 0:16:26.840 are are all reliant on insects as their food, and 0:16:26.880 --> 0:16:30.240 if it's zero degrees outside, that bad is there's no 0:16:30.320 --> 0:16:34.720 food available. So something has aroused or woken that bad up. 0:16:35.000 --> 0:16:38.360 And it could be you know, the discomfort associated with 0:16:38.520 --> 0:16:41.840 you know, having a fungus all across your body. Uh. 0:16:41.920 --> 0:16:45.480 You know, they're they're using energy resources. You know, they're 0:16:45.480 --> 0:16:48.360 in a very delicate balance when they go into hibernation, 0:16:48.600 --> 0:16:50.960 so they don't have a ton of energy left over 0:16:51.040 --> 0:16:55.400 to spare. So maybe that that fungus is causing some irritation, 0:16:55.560 --> 0:16:59.960 you know, some physical irritation, some problems with thermal regulation 0:17:00.440 --> 0:17:03.440 as as the fungus is might be causing holes in 0:17:03.480 --> 0:17:06.800 the potadium on the bat's wing. So they're they're running 0:17:06.800 --> 0:17:10.560 out of energy and with there, if they're completely out 0:17:10.560 --> 0:17:12.400 of energy, they're gonna have to go outside and try 0:17:12.440 --> 0:17:17.040 and hunt, and hunting in January in northern latitudes it's 0:17:17.040 --> 0:17:19.280 not going to be successful. There are no there are 0:17:19.320 --> 0:17:24.400 no insects available. So I take that that contributes to 0:17:24.480 --> 0:17:28.280 the diseases that you know, they're they're short on energy 0:17:28.359 --> 0:17:31.080 come middle of winter and they just can't make it through. 0:17:32.640 --> 0:17:36.520 So jumping on from there into c w D and 0:17:36.560 --> 0:17:40.320 the reason like kind of the reason that our audience, 0:17:40.960 --> 0:17:43.000 well I know the reason are on it is interested 0:17:43.000 --> 0:17:44.960 in c w D because we have a lot of 0:17:45.240 --> 0:17:48.160 people we hang out with and who listen, who eat 0:17:48.200 --> 0:17:50.920 a lot of venison, okay, avid deer hunters, And the 0:17:51.040 --> 0:17:54.399 question we get all the time is like, what do 0:17:54.440 --> 0:17:56.159 you think about c w D? What's gonna happen with 0:17:56.200 --> 0:17:59.040 c w D? And is my dear safety, would you 0:17:59.080 --> 0:18:01.600 eat a deer if it has w D? And um, 0:18:03.520 --> 0:18:08.160 I'm always like, I'm always uh brimming over with opinions 0:18:08.160 --> 0:18:11.560 about everything, but I'm always really hesitant to talk about 0:18:11.560 --> 0:18:16.080 something that has so many question marks. And I think 0:18:16.080 --> 0:18:18.000 we'll probably in talking to you about this, will probably 0:18:18.080 --> 0:18:20.200 butt up against a lot of those question marks, maybe 0:18:20.200 --> 0:18:22.360 to a point where you don't even I feel like 0:18:22.440 --> 0:18:24.760 you know where you you feel like you've moved beyond 0:18:24.920 --> 0:18:28.680 the known the known science, and you're just going into 0:18:28.680 --> 0:18:31.159 pure speculations. So I realized that's gonna happen. If and 0:18:31.160 --> 0:18:32.800 if you do get up to a thing where I'm 0:18:32.840 --> 0:18:35.280 asking you an opinion and you don't want to give it, 0:18:35.520 --> 0:18:39.240 that's great. But I think the safe way to begin 0:18:39.400 --> 0:18:45.720 and talk about this. Can you explain the relationship between 0:18:45.760 --> 0:18:48.440 when we hear about mad cow disease, we hear about 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:54.639 chronic waste and disease, and then we hear about jacob. Okay, 0:18:56.040 --> 0:18:59.119 they're all kind of cousins, right, I mean, can you 0:18:59.160 --> 0:19:02.080 break down that fan the tree? Sure? I can t. 0:19:02.400 --> 0:19:07.159 Scrape scrape is another one. Transmissible mink and cephalopathy is 0:19:07.200 --> 0:19:11.800 another one. So all right, all of the diseases you 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:15.240 mentioned c w D and deer scrape in sheep, BSc 0:19:15.359 --> 0:19:19.080 or mad cow disease in in in cattle, and that's 0:19:19.080 --> 0:19:24.840 spongeforn spongeyform and cephalopathy kreuz failed yacops disease in humans. 0:19:24.840 --> 0:19:27.320 There's another one in humans that we don't see anymore. 0:19:27.359 --> 0:19:32.200 It's called cubu. Okay, all of these diseases are members 0:19:32.320 --> 0:19:37.359 of a family of diseases called transmissible spongeyform and cephalopathy 0:19:37.960 --> 0:19:41.439 or T S S. Great big long words and you 0:19:41.480 --> 0:19:43.440 look it up in the dictionary and it boils down 0:19:43.480 --> 0:19:47.960 pretty simple. And cephalopathy is a disease of the brain. Okay. 0:19:48.200 --> 0:19:54.760 Spongeyform means spongy or holes, and transmissible means very bit 0:19:54.840 --> 0:19:58.119 simply that a disease can be transmitted from animal A 0:19:58.480 --> 0:20:03.080 to animal B. It's amissible spongy brain, yeah, something like that, 0:20:03.320 --> 0:20:06.040 something like that, and so, but it's important to understand 0:20:06.119 --> 0:20:09.960 that the source of that spongy nous or the holes 0:20:09.960 --> 0:20:14.600 in the brain as well. These diseases are the causative 0:20:14.680 --> 0:20:20.440 agent is a protein, okay, being very different than virtually 0:20:20.480 --> 0:20:23.159 any other disease we know of. You think of viruses, 0:20:23.280 --> 0:20:26.040 we think of you know, bacteria, we think of you know, 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:28.280 in the case of white nose syndrome, you know, an 0:20:28.280 --> 0:20:34.200 invasive fungus. Okay, all of those are in essence living entities. 0:20:34.320 --> 0:20:38.240 They have nucleic material they so we can see how 0:20:38.280 --> 0:20:41.720 they can reproduce, we can see how they can evolve 0:20:41.800 --> 0:20:46.320 over time. So you come back to the cause of agent. 0:20:46.400 --> 0:20:49.760 For T. S S, a protein that's referred to as 0:20:49.800 --> 0:20:53.399 a preon and so you get into it's kind of 0:20:53.560 --> 0:20:57.120 challenging to to put this in the same sense as 0:20:57.200 --> 0:21:02.160 you know viruses and bacteria because they don't have genetic material. 0:21:03.280 --> 0:21:09.000 So these, right, well not really a protein is not 0:21:09.119 --> 0:21:12.680 necessarily a living entity. We don't. But but I mean, 0:21:12.720 --> 0:21:19.600 but it causes I'll try, I'll try. So all mammals 0:21:19.720 --> 0:21:26.480 produce a normal cellular preon protein. Okay. It's a chain 0:21:26.520 --> 0:21:29.480 of amino acids. It's about two fifty long, so it's 0:21:29.480 --> 0:21:32.879 a relatively small protein. And so if you go back 0:21:32.920 --> 0:21:36.920 to what you learned in in biology class about proteins, 0:21:36.960 --> 0:21:39.480 it's a chain of amino acids that then folds up 0:21:39.480 --> 0:21:44.800 into a three dimensional shape. Okay, So all mammals produce 0:21:45.000 --> 0:21:49.359 normal prion proteins. We're not certain exactly what they do, 0:21:49.840 --> 0:21:54.040 but they they're very efficient, okay, in the body and 0:21:54.280 --> 0:21:57.800 produced by all mammals. And it seemed like produced a 0:21:57.800 --> 0:22:01.680 lot of normal cellular prem pro tein in the central 0:22:01.760 --> 0:22:06.919 nervous system as well. When a preon protein is produced, 0:22:06.960 --> 0:22:11.120 it's produced in an in an extra cellular environment, or 0:22:11.240 --> 0:22:15.040 or coded for it does whatever it does. It might 0:22:15.119 --> 0:22:20.360 be involved in intracellular communication. But then that normal cellular 0:22:20.400 --> 0:22:23.840 preon protein is broken down, it's recycled by the body, 0:22:24.280 --> 0:22:27.680 has a half life of maybe between four and six hours. 0:22:27.720 --> 0:22:30.920 So it's produced, it does what it does. It's broken 0:22:30.960 --> 0:22:35.680 down by the body and then recycled into its normal parts. Okay, 0:22:35.880 --> 0:22:39.919 then there is this disease associated preon protein. It's the 0:22:39.960 --> 0:22:45.280 exact same sequence of amino acids. It's folded up into 0:22:45.320 --> 0:22:48.879 a different three dimensional form. So if you think of 0:22:48.960 --> 0:22:51.840 if you took a piece of of a really old 0:22:51.920 --> 0:22:54.440 rubber band, you know that's been sitting in a drawer 0:22:54.520 --> 0:22:57.800 for several years. It's wound up into a three dimensional shape. 0:22:58.119 --> 0:23:00.200 So if you think of that as the normal form, 0:23:00.440 --> 0:23:02.080 and then you stretch it out and you let it 0:23:02.119 --> 0:23:05.800 go and it and it snaps back into a different form, 0:23:05.840 --> 0:23:09.120 that's in essence what we're looking at. Okay, a different 0:23:09.240 --> 0:23:13.240 three dimensional form of the same protein. And this different form, 0:23:13.320 --> 0:23:19.040 the disease associated preon, has radically different properties. Um I 0:23:19.080 --> 0:23:22.520 mentioned a normal cellular preon protein breaks down on its 0:23:22.520 --> 0:23:24.600 own in about four to six hours, or has a 0:23:24.600 --> 0:23:27.879 half life of four to six hours. The disease associated 0:23:27.920 --> 0:23:32.000 form is persistent. Um if it's can persist in the 0:23:32.200 --> 0:23:37.040 environment for years, potentially up to decades. Okay. It also 0:23:37.080 --> 0:23:40.920 cannot be broken down by ultra violet light. Um, it's 0:23:41.160 --> 0:23:45.199 very insensitive to change is in temperature. So if you 0:23:45.240 --> 0:23:49.399 want to destroy UH disease associated preon protein, you'd have 0:23:49.480 --> 0:23:53.320 to get it up to maybe six D plus degrees centigrade. 0:23:53.720 --> 0:23:55.640 So you're not going to cook it out of out 0:23:55.640 --> 0:24:01.040 of a stake, per se. So erradically different protein. It's 0:24:01.080 --> 0:24:05.480 the same protein with radically different form and radically different characteristics. 0:24:06.160 --> 0:24:09.440 It looks like um, this is a more or less 0:24:09.480 --> 0:24:15.600 like a template where a single disease associated prion protein 0:24:15.920 --> 0:24:22.440 enters into a healthy, susceptible animal. That disease associated protein 0:24:22.720 --> 0:24:27.600 makes physical contact with the normal cellular protein, causing it 0:24:27.640 --> 0:24:33.040 to unfold and refold into its own form and then 0:24:33.080 --> 0:24:36.960 moving on, so creating kind of a cascading interaction where 0:24:37.000 --> 0:24:41.720 the disease associated form takes over the system. Okay, And 0:24:41.760 --> 0:24:46.800 the disease associated prion protein in the body is associated 0:24:46.960 --> 0:24:51.600 with neuronal death, and so when we talk about that 0:24:51.600 --> 0:24:56.040 that spongy appearance of the brain, those are holes where 0:24:56.160 --> 0:25:01.760 neurons used to be and as and as the disease 0:25:01.760 --> 0:25:04.919 associated prion proteins come in contact. We don't know the 0:25:04.960 --> 0:25:09.240 exact mechanism of how they kill neurons. What they do. 0:25:09.320 --> 0:25:15.000 They result in neuronal death, leaving those microscopic holes in 0:25:15.040 --> 0:25:18.679 the brain. So that's the physical mechanism of how we 0:25:18.760 --> 0:25:21.800 get to you know, that trend, that sponge a form 0:25:22.040 --> 0:25:26.480 and cephalopathy. So without equipment, because you are the naked eye, 0:25:26.600 --> 0:25:32.320 look at like a grossly infected brain until now you 0:25:32.320 --> 0:25:34.800 want the holes aren't quite that large, So the neurons 0:25:34.800 --> 0:25:37.800 aren't that large. Saying even so, even so it would 0:25:37.880 --> 0:25:40.560 appear even if even if it was, this brain was 0:25:40.760 --> 0:25:43.480 racked with the stuff, they would never like shape change 0:25:43.520 --> 0:25:45.080 the form of the brain. You look at and look 0:25:45.119 --> 0:25:47.640 like a normal brain unless you look at it under 0:25:47.640 --> 0:25:50.199 a microscope and some special standing, then you would be 0:25:50.200 --> 0:25:53.800 able to see it that the hallmark of of all 0:25:54.000 --> 0:25:59.919 ts c s is progressive neurological degeneration. Okay, you slow 0:26:00.080 --> 0:26:04.160 lee are losing the capability to be a functional being. 0:26:04.960 --> 0:26:08.120 And if you if you look at kreuzfeldiakops disease, one 0:26:08.119 --> 0:26:12.080 of the human the human t s S. It affects 0:26:12.240 --> 0:26:15.320 um We see new cases about one in a million 0:26:15.400 --> 0:26:18.720 to one and a half per million. New cases per 0:26:18.800 --> 0:26:23.639 year in humans the typical clinical figures, and it is 0:26:23.680 --> 0:26:26.640 a person in their late fifties to early sixties, say 0:26:26.720 --> 0:26:29.040 one on one in one million, one in a million 0:26:29.480 --> 0:26:31.800 in new cases per year. And is that is that 0:26:31.880 --> 0:26:35.119 globally or nationally? That's globally, But is it true? Is 0:26:35.160 --> 0:26:38.200 it true in an international sense? I say to say 0:26:38.240 --> 0:26:43.000 that three hundred Americans a year get this? Yeah, yeah, 0:26:43.040 --> 0:26:45.440 probably pretty close. If we've got three hundred million, we're 0:26:45.440 --> 0:26:49.399 probably looking at three cases per year in humans in 0:26:49.480 --> 0:26:54.080 the United States. And yeah, that's a ballpark figure. Um 0:26:54.680 --> 0:26:59.680 horrific way to go. Progressive neurological degeneration followed by death. 0:27:00.440 --> 0:27:04.240 And we think about, you know, as these disease associated 0:27:04.280 --> 0:27:07.800 prion proteins accumulate in the in the brain and in 0:27:07.840 --> 0:27:12.320 the central nervous system, resulting in neurnal death, it's easy 0:27:12.400 --> 0:27:15.719 to see how you know, once that reaches a critical mass, 0:27:16.080 --> 0:27:21.240 you know, inside of the central nervous system, um neurological 0:27:21.280 --> 0:27:25.800 degeneration proceeds fairly quickly and is followed by death. So 0:27:25.920 --> 0:27:28.359 that's the hallmark of each one of the t s S. 0:27:28.880 --> 0:27:31.840 Was the same thing in BSc or mad cow disease, 0:27:32.560 --> 0:27:35.800 where you know, You probably remember seeing videos of cows 0:27:35.800 --> 0:27:39.080 that are just you know, they're nobody's home right now. 0:27:39.200 --> 0:27:43.760 That's they it's reached that phase. Um another hallmark of 0:27:43.760 --> 0:27:47.560 of the t s s as tremendously long incubation period. 0:27:48.119 --> 0:27:52.600 So in Kreutzfeld Jakob's disease, we you know, it's hard 0:27:52.640 --> 0:27:56.320 to say how long that disease has been progressing in individuals, 0:27:56.480 --> 0:27:59.080 but it seems to manifest in that clinical phase of 0:27:59.119 --> 0:28:01.960 disease at the same time for him, that late fifties 0:28:02.000 --> 0:28:04.359 into early sixties. But you don't know what like, it 0:28:04.400 --> 0:28:08.800 doesn't spontaneously generate. It has to be the that the 0:28:08.880 --> 0:28:12.280 person in the case of the of the human form, 0:28:12.280 --> 0:28:14.760 it has to be the that the person somehow took 0:28:14.760 --> 0:28:21.359 in the infectious agent, and that's uncertain with m with 0:28:21.520 --> 0:28:24.919 c j D chrust failed THEOS disease, It's thought that 0:28:25.160 --> 0:28:30.840 most of the normal cases are sporadic or spontaneous in 0:28:30.880 --> 0:28:35.720 those individuals, that something just happened. Okay, they're during you know, 0:28:35.800 --> 0:28:39.600 the course of the lifetime that started that cascading interaction 0:28:40.120 --> 0:28:44.760 with one or multiple pre on normal cellular preons tipping 0:28:44.800 --> 0:28:49.400 over into that disease associated form and starting that cascading interaction, 0:28:49.680 --> 0:28:55.440 So it's not necessarily that they rubbed noses with with 0:28:55.560 --> 0:28:59.920 another infected person. Correct in in the majority of case 0:29:00.080 --> 0:29:03.560 is in that classical c j D profile. Either that 0:29:03.800 --> 0:29:07.920 or we have been unable to identify the moment the causation, 0:29:08.160 --> 0:29:11.600 you know, the causative event. We can contrast that a 0:29:11.600 --> 0:29:15.600 little bit with another disease, really remarkable disease called kuru. 0:29:16.000 --> 0:29:22.360 Okay Couru was first described, uh back in the nineteen 0:29:23.160 --> 0:29:28.480 twenties nineteen thirties someplace in there in Papua New Guinea 0:29:28.880 --> 0:29:32.200 in a tribe called the Farai tribe Fo r E, 0:29:33.000 --> 0:29:36.760 and the Faray had a rather what we guess we 0:29:36.800 --> 0:29:42.720 would consider an unusual trait, and they practiced ritualized cannibalism. 0:29:42.800 --> 0:29:47.040 So when one of their tribal members died, to honor 0:29:47.160 --> 0:29:53.600 that tribal member, they consumed the body okay, and somehow 0:29:53.640 --> 0:29:58.880 a t SC got into that population. And so when 0:29:59.160 --> 0:30:04.760 the ritualist cannibalism occurred, it created an opportunity for transmission 0:30:05.440 --> 0:30:09.240 of you know, the disease associated agent for the disease 0:30:09.280 --> 0:30:15.800 associated prion protein, and so kuru developed over the course 0:30:15.840 --> 0:30:19.480 of a few decades into an epidemic situation. It started 0:30:19.560 --> 0:30:23.320 very small, so when one person died of curu uh, 0:30:23.440 --> 0:30:28.240 their body was consumed maybe leading to other cases. They 0:30:28.280 --> 0:30:34.120 infected multiple individuals. Then after a fairly protracted incubation period, 0:30:34.240 --> 0:30:37.360 some of those individuals died very horrific death, you know, 0:30:37.440 --> 0:30:42.440 after you know, severe neuronal degeneration. They were consumed and 0:30:42.480 --> 0:30:45.920 so you can see how that cascading interaction. So they're 0:30:46.000 --> 0:30:51.520 very clearly there was a consumption you know, some sort 0:30:51.560 --> 0:30:56.200 of of a foraging habit which lead to disease that 0:30:56.520 --> 0:31:00.960 coincidentally is identical or virtually identical to what happened with 0:31:01.240 --> 0:31:05.360 bovine sponge form and cephalopathy or you know BSc mad 0:31:05.440 --> 0:31:10.400 cow disease, where it seems like we were trying to 0:31:10.480 --> 0:31:16.640 create maximum efficiency in in a livestock production system. So 0:31:16.680 --> 0:31:18.960 there's a lot of waste when you butcher a cow, 0:31:19.320 --> 0:31:22.160 there's a lot of waste. There's you know, the the awful, 0:31:22.400 --> 0:31:26.120 the hide bones, things like that, and so we all 0:31:26.200 --> 0:31:29.880 realized that you know, cows produced better with on a 0:31:29.960 --> 0:31:34.000 higher protein diet. So it made sense, it made logical 0:31:34.040 --> 0:31:37.880 sense from a production standpoint to take the awful from 0:31:37.920 --> 0:31:41.320 you know, when you're slaughtering cattle to render it, cook it, 0:31:41.760 --> 0:31:44.840 and then mix it up into a high protein food source, 0:31:44.920 --> 0:31:48.200 mix it with other with other forage material, and feed 0:31:48.240 --> 0:31:51.120 it back to cows. So in essence, what we were 0:31:51.160 --> 0:31:54.520 doing was we were creating cannibalistic cows, right, you know, 0:31:54.520 --> 0:31:56.840 we're feeding cow back to cow. It's not a normal 0:31:56.920 --> 0:32:02.040 it's an adherent foraging behavior. So somehow we got the 0:32:02.120 --> 0:32:06.600 first case of BSc in a cow. That cow either 0:32:06.800 --> 0:32:10.600 died from b SC or was you know processed normally 0:32:10.800 --> 0:32:13.480 at you know, for for beef production, whatever the case 0:32:13.560 --> 0:32:18.600 may be. The infectious material being concentrated in the spinal 0:32:18.640 --> 0:32:21.800 cord and the brain of that first cow was rendered 0:32:23.000 --> 0:32:27.080 not quite effectively enough to to uh, to deactivate the 0:32:27.120 --> 0:32:31.640 infectious It didn't get it didn't get quite warm enough, 0:32:32.960 --> 0:32:36.320 and so uh, that cow, in essence was fed back 0:32:36.360 --> 0:32:44.000 to thousands those some of those animals developed bs and 0:32:44.120 --> 0:32:48.280 so you're trying to maximize the use of the carcasses, 0:32:48.360 --> 0:32:51.240 so you grind that up and feed it back to 0:32:51.360 --> 0:32:56.040 more and so the numbers look like, you know, they 0:32:56.040 --> 0:32:59.760 were probably potentially millions of cows at one point that 0:32:59.800 --> 0:33:07.239 we're infected with with b SC. And as soon as epidemiologists, 0:33:07.280 --> 0:33:10.120 you know, disease specialists figured out, you know, it seemed like, yeah, 0:33:10.120 --> 0:33:12.080 this has got to be a food born thing, and 0:33:12.120 --> 0:33:15.440 they were able to figure out what it was band 0:33:15.720 --> 0:33:22.560 feeding bovine protein back to other cows, and the cycle stopped, 0:33:22.600 --> 0:33:25.040 in essence stopped, And so we had an epidemic curve 0:33:25.080 --> 0:33:27.120 that went ran like it looked like it was going 0:33:27.160 --> 0:33:29.600 straight up a mountain side. And as soon as you 0:33:29.680 --> 0:33:32.800 figure out what was going on and you stop that practice, 0:33:33.040 --> 0:33:36.120 the epidemic curve comes down the other side. Now there's 0:33:36.120 --> 0:33:39.000 still a few cases out there periodically today, but not 0:33:39.160 --> 0:33:41.720 the volume that there were, Like the US has only 0:33:41.720 --> 0:33:44.479 had one, right, some coward of Yakima, Washington, right, Well 0:33:44.520 --> 0:33:46.160 that was the first one. We've had a few more 0:33:46.160 --> 0:33:49.520 than that. UM. Yeah, it's kind of interesting in that 0:33:49.880 --> 0:33:54.040 UM we can talk about how c w D moved around, 0:33:54.080 --> 0:33:57.400 but it looks almost certainly like the United States gave 0:33:57.480 --> 0:34:01.760 Canada c w D um through movement of captive ELK 0:34:02.520 --> 0:34:07.360 back in the night or potentially early nine before the UM. 0:34:07.440 --> 0:34:10.080 It was we'd identified what was going on, our scientists 0:34:10.120 --> 0:34:13.280 had had identified what was going on, But it's certainly 0:34:13.440 --> 0:34:17.560 we was prior to knowledge of how movement of of 0:34:17.640 --> 0:34:21.640 animals could really contribute to movement of disease. But it 0:34:21.640 --> 0:34:25.200 looks like almost certainly that we gave CWD to Canada 0:34:25.640 --> 0:34:27.799 and so maybe it was only fitting that they sent 0:34:27.880 --> 0:34:31.680 B A C back to us in return. So let 0:34:31.680 --> 0:34:32.920 me back you up a little bit here. I want 0:34:32.920 --> 0:34:35.960 to get to that, But let me back up. Have 0:34:37.520 --> 0:34:40.319 are there known cases I should know this, but don't 0:34:40.360 --> 0:34:44.360 Are there known cases where they could track the mad 0:34:44.480 --> 0:34:51.719 cow form having passed into a human, like do they 0:34:51.760 --> 0:34:55.399 are they able to able to trail that? Yes? Yes, 0:34:55.600 --> 0:35:00.239 pretty clearly. Yeah. We mentioned kreutzfeldi ocups diseases being kind 0:35:00.239 --> 0:35:03.600 of that classic disease the clinical profile as a person 0:35:03.719 --> 0:35:07.560 late fifties, early sixties. There's another form, it's called variant 0:35:07.760 --> 0:35:12.560 Kreutzfeld jacops disease. And the first cases were detected in 0:35:13.160 --> 0:35:16.800 largely in Great Britain in the same time frame. A 0:35:16.840 --> 0:35:21.120 little bit later after the BSc crisis began in in 0:35:21.200 --> 0:35:26.080 Great Britain as well. These humans were exhibiting very you know, 0:35:26.239 --> 0:35:30.040 similar characteristics and when they died it was very apparent 0:35:30.239 --> 0:35:33.920 from uh, from their autopsy, from looking at the spinal 0:35:34.000 --> 0:35:36.480 and the brain material that they had a sponge a 0:35:36.520 --> 0:35:39.879 form and cephalopathy, and they were able to tie that 0:35:40.000 --> 0:35:45.960 statistically back to consumption of beef from you know, from 0:35:46.000 --> 0:35:48.960 the from the mad cow ord the b SC situation. 0:35:49.600 --> 0:35:52.719 So here's an instance in BSc is A is A 0:35:52.920 --> 0:35:57.360 is A isn't very interesting disease that it was able 0:35:57.400 --> 0:36:01.360 to jump across that species bar arier. So it it 0:36:01.440 --> 0:36:05.280 was not just a disease of cattle. When we fed 0:36:05.440 --> 0:36:10.440 BSc positive material to multiple other species, including humans, it 0:36:10.600 --> 0:36:14.000 lead to disease. And so that variant c j D Verian, 0:36:14.040 --> 0:36:17.279 kreuz Felt, Jakobs disease profile seemed to be humans that 0:36:17.320 --> 0:36:21.160 were a lot younger, you know, typically in twenties and thirties, 0:36:21.239 --> 0:36:23.879 things like that. So it looked like c j D 0:36:24.680 --> 0:36:26.680 what it, but it acted different and so that was 0:36:26.760 --> 0:36:29.680 kind of the first tie. Was there a possibility that 0:36:29.760 --> 0:36:33.640 BSc crossed over And now it's it's fairly certain um 0:36:33.800 --> 0:36:38.360 that BSc did cross over into humans, bridging that species 0:36:38.400 --> 0:36:42.080 barrier um. And you might come back and wonder whell 0:36:42.120 --> 0:36:45.280 where did b SC come from? Well that's an interesting question. 0:36:45.320 --> 0:36:48.640 But one of the possibilities is that you know it 0:36:48.640 --> 0:36:52.919 originated as as scrapy, you know, in sheep, and that's 0:36:52.920 --> 0:36:54.960 one of the t s s we haven't gotten to yet, 0:36:55.000 --> 0:36:57.919 but that's one has been known longer than any Uh 0:36:57.960 --> 0:37:01.680 scraping and sheep was first document mented in the literature 0:37:01.719 --> 0:37:05.239 in seventeen thirty four, so it's been around for a 0:37:05.360 --> 0:37:08.360 very long time, and they probably could only tell the 0:37:08.680 --> 0:37:12.280 behavior of the dying animal right at that point in time. Yeah, 0:37:12.600 --> 0:37:17.640 and uh, scrapy has been been a problem for you know, 0:37:17.719 --> 0:37:21.400 for you know, many years, decades to centuries. But it 0:37:21.440 --> 0:37:26.600 looks like scrapy may crossed over into b SC and 0:37:26.680 --> 0:37:30.880 certainly it's it's one plausible explanation for for where chronic 0:37:30.920 --> 0:37:33.800 wasting disease came from. You know, c w D first 0:37:33.880 --> 0:37:36.880 described back in nineteen sixty seven in a in a 0:37:36.960 --> 0:37:39.920 research facility out in the state of Colorado. Doesn't mean 0:37:39.960 --> 0:37:42.759 it's started there, but it was first described there. And 0:37:42.800 --> 0:37:46.040 when we say c w D, we're talking about not 0:37:46.280 --> 0:37:48.600 so we're talking about just members of the deer family. 0:37:49.360 --> 0:37:52.319 Kerry c w D. As far as we know, c 0:37:52.560 --> 0:37:56.360 w D is the T S C of members of 0:37:56.400 --> 0:38:01.560 the servant or the deer family. Name which which species 0:38:01.880 --> 0:38:06.080 it's been founded, Okay, it has been detected in free 0:38:06.200 --> 0:38:11.960 ranging and captive white tail mule deer elk, a handful 0:38:12.000 --> 0:38:16.720 of cases in moose and in reindeer as well, most 0:38:16.800 --> 0:38:21.240 recently picked up in reindeer. Three reindeer and a couple 0:38:21.239 --> 0:38:24.960 of moose in Norway. You know, the first cases UM 0:38:24.960 --> 0:38:28.280 outside of North America other than a game farm situation 0:38:28.280 --> 0:38:31.840 in South Korea. So we talk about distribution of c 0:38:32.160 --> 0:38:35.560 w D in those species, and it's been picked up 0:38:35.560 --> 0:38:38.880 in in twenty four states in free ranging and or 0:38:39.040 --> 0:38:44.440 captive situations in North America. UH. Two provinces Alberta and 0:38:44.480 --> 0:38:49.440 Saskatchewan in Canada also picked up and described in South 0:38:49.520 --> 0:38:53.319 Korea UM and in South and South Korea DIN they 0:38:53.320 --> 0:38:59.800 have some American deer. Okay, Actually, yeah, it's interesting k 0:39:00.280 --> 0:39:04.880 because the the original animals that died were elk that 0:39:05.120 --> 0:39:08.680 still had Canadian ear tags in them, and so it's 0:39:08.880 --> 0:39:12.799 highly unlikely that those elk UM you know, swam the 0:39:12.840 --> 0:39:16.400 big pond from North America over to South Korea. So 0:39:16.719 --> 0:39:20.000 I think we can we can pretty clearly identify how, 0:39:20.320 --> 0:39:24.440 you know, how those animals and how diseased moved UM. 0:39:24.560 --> 0:39:27.680 Now there's been additional outbreaks in South Korea so it 0:39:27.719 --> 0:39:30.920 looks like their efforts to you know, stamp out or 0:39:31.000 --> 0:39:34.680 keep the disease under control, I haven't have had some success, 0:39:34.680 --> 0:39:37.319 but they haven't been completely successful in that they They've 0:39:37.360 --> 0:39:43.759 had a few additional outbreaks in Norway. Norway's real interesting situation. 0:39:43.840 --> 0:39:46.000 And I don't I don't know that we'll ever truly 0:39:46.080 --> 0:39:49.600 know how, um how c w D got there. It 0:39:49.719 --> 0:39:53.960 was picked up um, you know, a year ago in um, 0:39:54.120 --> 0:39:58.080 initially in a reindeer, and then after they did they 0:39:58.120 --> 0:40:00.919 did some additional surveillance outbreaks a valance, and they found 0:40:00.960 --> 0:40:03.880 it in two more reindeer. They also found it in 0:40:04.000 --> 0:40:08.080 two moose. Okay uh. And it's kind of it's interesting 0:40:08.080 --> 0:40:10.560 if the moose live near the reindeer, they were not. 0:40:10.719 --> 0:40:14.319 The moose were quite a distance away. And as you're 0:40:14.360 --> 0:40:18.960 you're full aware, and you know, moose are relatively solitary animals. 0:40:19.040 --> 0:40:22.000 They don't hang out in big herds. And so the 0:40:22.040 --> 0:40:24.560 cases we've seen in moose and even in North America 0:40:24.680 --> 0:40:26.799 been you know, just one here, one there. I think 0:40:26.840 --> 0:40:29.239 it's you know, less than ten total cases in all 0:40:29.320 --> 0:40:32.080 of North America and free ranging moose, so they don't 0:40:32.080 --> 0:40:35.359 seem to be a real big player. They're certainly susceptible um, 0:40:35.600 --> 0:40:37.760 you know to c w D, but they don't seem 0:40:37.800 --> 0:40:41.000 to be a real big player in movement of disease. Uh. 0:40:41.120 --> 0:40:45.640 Now with the reindeer again, as you're aware reindeer are 0:40:45.840 --> 0:40:49.319 you know, they hang together in very large herds. So 0:40:50.239 --> 0:40:53.600 science was completed a few years ago that strongly suggested 0:40:53.640 --> 0:40:56.600 reindeer were susceptible to c w D. But we have 0:40:56.800 --> 0:41:00.600 not seen an outbreak in North America. So they instance 0:41:00.680 --> 0:41:04.319 in Norway, now pick it up in three reindeer is 0:41:04.360 --> 0:41:08.239 the first instance in free ranging herds. Well, the Norwegians 0:41:08.280 --> 0:41:12.960 are very very concerned about this, and uh, and so 0:41:13.120 --> 0:41:16.920 they are they're kind of taking the gloves off with 0:41:17.000 --> 0:41:20.160 regard to management, something that we have not really been 0:41:20.200 --> 0:41:24.040 effective at dealing with disease in free ranging populations in 0:41:24.080 --> 0:41:27.399 North America. They're going to take the gloves off over there. 0:41:27.960 --> 0:41:34.920 And so the reindeer maintain relatively static herd structures hanging 0:41:34.960 --> 0:41:38.719 together in a in a known geographic area. And so 0:41:38.800 --> 0:41:44.280 the plan is to um to eliminate, eradicate one whole 0:41:44.480 --> 0:41:48.840 herd unit of about two thousand reindeer over a fairly 0:41:48.960 --> 0:41:51.839 large geographic area now it will be a little bit 0:41:51.880 --> 0:41:54.799 easier than uh than trying to get rid of all 0:41:54.800 --> 0:41:57.279 the white tail in a region, because they are they 0:41:57.440 --> 0:42:01.320 you know, they hang together, and they're in more open countries, 0:42:01.440 --> 0:42:04.799 more open countries, So it will they will be able 0:42:04.840 --> 0:42:08.640 to pull it off. But hats off to the Norwegian 0:42:08.680 --> 0:42:12.280 government and their you know, their natural resources and agriculture folks. 0:42:12.320 --> 0:42:14.799 They look at this. It's a very serious issue. They 0:42:14.840 --> 0:42:17.600 have observed what has been going on in North America 0:42:17.680 --> 0:42:21.560 with cw D over the last few decades, and they concluded, hey, 0:42:21.600 --> 0:42:25.279 they don't want it be when you own when you 0:42:25.480 --> 0:42:29.319 so far, it seems like that disease, however it got there, 0:42:31.000 --> 0:42:35.280 is a fairly recent phenomena, and so with c w D, 0:42:35.600 --> 0:42:38.319 I would argue that you probably get one chance at 0:42:38.320 --> 0:42:41.560 effective management of c w D in a free ranching population. 0:42:42.080 --> 0:42:45.560 It has to be early. And so they fully they believe, 0:42:45.680 --> 0:42:48.160 based on the data they have that c w D 0:42:48.160 --> 0:42:51.080 has not been there long. They don't want it. So 0:42:51.120 --> 0:42:53.200 they're going to take the gloves off. They're going to 0:42:53.239 --> 0:42:56.640 eliminate this herd unit, and they're going to keep all 0:42:56.920 --> 0:43:00.520 other animals out of the geographic area where they heard 0:43:00.520 --> 0:43:03.880 where this herd, you know, has lived for a minimum 0:43:03.880 --> 0:43:08.239 of five years. We talked about that that UM characteristic 0:43:08.280 --> 0:43:11.919 of the disease associated pre on protein UM not being 0:43:11.920 --> 0:43:14.279 able to be degraded in the environment. It looks like 0:43:14.320 --> 0:43:18.200 it persists in the environment for years, potentially decades, and 0:43:18.280 --> 0:43:24.160 can remain viable and bioavailable. So healthy, naive, susceptible animals 0:43:24.560 --> 0:43:29.560 can pick up that disease associated preon protein from contaminated environment. 0:43:30.360 --> 0:43:34.040 If you catch disease early enough, early enough in the epidemic, 0:43:34.280 --> 0:43:38.799 there's probably not much of that contamination relative to you know, 0:43:38.960 --> 0:43:42.880 later on. So if you're going to be successful with 0:43:43.000 --> 0:43:46.440 managing this disease, you have to catch it early and 0:43:46.480 --> 0:43:48.440 you probably have to take the gloves off the way 0:43:48.480 --> 0:43:52.080 the Norwegians are doing now. You may recall back to 0:43:53.080 --> 0:43:57.120 Wisconsin back in two thousand and two, Well hit me 0:43:57.160 --> 0:44:01.000 with Colorado. So what happened in Colorado? All right? So 0:44:01.280 --> 0:44:04.759 that that was where they identified it in the US. Yeah, Well, 0:44:05.160 --> 0:44:09.360 CWD was first described in this research facility in Colorado 0:44:09.440 --> 0:44:16.600 back in n They were research animals, they were they 0:44:16.640 --> 0:44:19.719 were captive animals. They were research animals maintained by the 0:44:20.160 --> 0:44:26.520 by the state of Colorado. Now part of the history 0:44:26.560 --> 0:44:30.600 of CWD is that there may have been disease research 0:44:30.680 --> 0:44:35.680 going on with scrapey in that vicinity or the same area, 0:44:36.040 --> 0:44:39.279 or you know, maybe even the same facility. So one 0:44:39.320 --> 0:44:43.279 of the possible mechanisms for where cw D came from, 0:44:43.280 --> 0:44:45.959 and it's not the only one, is that what we're 0:44:45.960 --> 0:44:50.880 looking at is scrapy and deer. Cw D and scrapey 0:44:51.320 --> 0:44:54.840 have some really unique characteristics. All the rest of the 0:44:54.920 --> 0:44:59.319 t sc s be at um kreuz feldacops disease be 0:44:59.480 --> 0:45:03.120 a be se and cattle, they don't move on their own. 0:45:03.200 --> 0:45:05.759 We had to feed cow to cow in order to 0:45:05.880 --> 0:45:10.799 create an epidemic with b SC. With Guru, people had 0:45:10.840 --> 0:45:14.920 to consume people, okay, in order for disease to move. 0:45:15.360 --> 0:45:17.840 Scrape and c w D are unique amongst the t 0:45:18.000 --> 0:45:20.080 s c s and that they are contagious. They are 0:45:20.280 --> 0:45:25.799 freely laterally transmissible, so dear a or elk can give 0:45:25.880 --> 0:45:28.839 c w D to another animal on its own. There 0:45:28.880 --> 0:45:32.239 doesn't need to be any human intervention. Scrapey is the 0:45:32.320 --> 0:45:35.399 same way it moves sheep to sheep to sheep. These 0:45:35.480 --> 0:45:41.560 animals are shedding infectious agent through bodily fluids through saliva, 0:45:41.719 --> 0:45:48.160 through urine, through feces, and that creates a contagious mechanism. 0:45:48.520 --> 0:45:52.960 If that saliva is taken up by another animal, a healthy, naive, 0:45:53.040 --> 0:45:57.120 susceptible animal, it can lead to disease transmission. So we 0:45:57.239 --> 0:45:59.960 go back to the Colorado thing. One of the possibility 0:46:00.600 --> 0:46:04.799 might be that c w D originated and transit transferred 0:46:04.800 --> 0:46:09.040 across the species barrier from scrapy. You look at the timeline. 0:46:09.160 --> 0:46:13.160 I mentioned that that scrapey was first described in seventeen 0:46:13.239 --> 0:46:16.600 thirty four on the other side of the pond. The 0:46:16.760 --> 0:46:20.480 first time scrapy was described in North America was in 0:46:20.680 --> 0:46:24.759 ninety and it was traced back to a flock of 0:46:24.880 --> 0:46:29.520 sheep that had been moved across the pond, so human intervention. 0:46:30.120 --> 0:46:33.240 But over the course of the next twenty years, scrape 0:46:33.440 --> 0:46:38.520 had proliferated and been moved um, largely by humans moving 0:46:38.600 --> 0:46:43.640 sheep around. Scrape had moved um across across a lot 0:46:43.719 --> 0:46:47.719 of North America as well. So the time and the 0:46:47.880 --> 0:46:51.360 place if we think scrapey came to North America around 0:46:52.600 --> 0:46:54.880 and the first time c w D was described was 0:46:54.920 --> 0:46:58.560 about twenty years later out in Colorado, that's what we 0:46:58.560 --> 0:47:02.120 would we would refer to as as as a parsimonious 0:47:02.239 --> 0:47:05.600 solution for where CWD came from. We can't prove it, 0:47:05.680 --> 0:47:08.279 though there are other positives. Some people are kind of 0:47:10.239 --> 0:47:14.160 I don't fully understand why, but there's like, um, there's 0:47:14.200 --> 0:47:17.560 some resistance to that. I gather because if you start 0:47:17.640 --> 0:47:21.239 reading on the web, you'll find people making like very 0:47:21.360 --> 0:47:29.040 spirited arguments that that, uh, it's always been here. Do 0:47:29.040 --> 0:47:31.080 you even want to do you even care to speak 0:47:31.120 --> 0:47:33.920 to that? Well? Yeah, I would. I can take take 0:47:33.960 --> 0:47:40.200 a stab at that. Okay. So CWD in these places 0:47:40.320 --> 0:47:43.920 where it has been established the longest places in Colorado, 0:47:44.960 --> 0:47:48.359 place in Wyoming, in the South Converse Unit in UH 0:47:48.520 --> 0:47:53.080 in Converse County, Wyoming. I think we're not far behind 0:47:53.320 --> 0:47:57.600 in in Iowa County not far from here, Iowa County, Wisconsin. 0:47:58.080 --> 0:48:03.960 Places where cw D has been established for a while decades, 0:48:04.920 --> 0:48:08.440 we've see two phenomenon. Number one, we see geographic spreads, 0:48:08.480 --> 0:48:10.920 so dear to deer to deer, you know it starts 0:48:11.000 --> 0:48:15.360 spreading from there. Number Two, we see increases in prevalence 0:48:15.520 --> 0:48:18.440 or the proportion of animals that are afflicted by c 0:48:18.760 --> 0:48:23.840 w D in some of these places. UM in UH, Wyoming, 0:48:23.960 --> 0:48:28.360 south Converse County, in a few areas in Colorado, U 0:48:28.600 --> 0:48:32.080 just south here in Iowa County, prevalence has reached up 0:48:32.160 --> 0:48:35.200 into the area in adult male so we're talking two 0:48:35.239 --> 0:48:39.239 and a half an older aged animals. Deer prevalence in 0:48:39.320 --> 0:48:43.320 the forty to fifty percent range. So you think about that. 0:48:43.480 --> 0:48:46.399 So you go out hunting and you're you're lucky enough 0:48:46.480 --> 0:48:48.640 to be able to tag, you know, in a three 0:48:48.680 --> 0:48:51.480 and a half year old buck, take a coin out 0:48:51.480 --> 0:48:53.920 of your pocket, flip it up in the air, and 0:48:54.080 --> 0:48:56.600 those are the odds that that deer has c w D. 0:48:57.520 --> 0:49:00.880 So when prevalence gets to that level, we start to 0:49:01.280 --> 0:49:04.560 you know, I mean, that's the science. The numbers suggest 0:49:04.719 --> 0:49:08.360 that we're going to start seeing population level impacts that 0:49:08.480 --> 0:49:14.320 a population cannot sustain that level of disease. So because 0:49:14.760 --> 0:49:18.440 it's I see this all the time, because it's always fatal, 0:49:18.920 --> 0:49:22.360 it is. It's a fatal disease. Now you'll get arguments 0:49:22.600 --> 0:49:25.200 and and somebody right now when they're listening to this 0:49:25.440 --> 0:49:28.440 is gonna say, always full of crap, it's not always fatal. 0:49:29.040 --> 0:49:32.080 And the argument that I typically here goes along something 0:49:32.160 --> 0:49:34.360 like this, that so a deer head c w D 0:49:34.680 --> 0:49:36.960 and a hunter shot that dear. That dear didn't die 0:49:37.000 --> 0:49:42.239 of c w D died of paracute lead poisoning. UM. 0:49:43.480 --> 0:49:46.920 But it isn't if If a disease is allowed to progress, 0:49:47.360 --> 0:49:49.880 it is fatal. You think about it and what I 0:49:49.960 --> 0:49:54.319 describe other thing happened airing, some other thing happening. Um, 0:49:54.640 --> 0:49:57.719 that disease is always going to be fatal. Once you 0:49:57.960 --> 0:50:01.640 start to see that that neurologic go degeneration in the brain. 0:50:02.080 --> 0:50:06.280 It's progressive. There's no way to stop that domino effect 0:50:06.560 --> 0:50:11.480 of the disease associated prions proliferating through the brain resulting 0:50:11.560 --> 0:50:14.680 in neronal death. There's no stopping that. There's no reversing 0:50:14.760 --> 0:50:16.960 the damage. And how long could it take? But I 0:50:17.000 --> 0:50:18.440 guess it's hard to answer because you don't know what 0:50:18.520 --> 0:50:22.960 the beginning is in UM. Like if you say, like 0:50:24.200 --> 0:50:26.960 I want to get back to I'm getting ideas stacked 0:50:27.000 --> 0:50:28.600 on top of each other here. But what is run 0:50:28.680 --> 0:50:30.359 with this for a minute. When you hear people say 0:50:30.360 --> 0:50:35.200 it's always fatal. So you know, a deer that gets 0:50:35.239 --> 0:50:38.640 to be like a buck, let's say that gets to 0:50:38.680 --> 0:50:42.280 be five years old, he's already super old anyways, Okay, 0:50:42.719 --> 0:50:44.600 So if it's always fatal, Like, how do you how 0:50:44.640 --> 0:50:46.520 do you measure that? Because you don't know when they 0:50:46.640 --> 0:50:48.000 got it in the first place. So I was gonna 0:50:48.040 --> 0:50:50.000 ask it how long it takes to kill a deer, 0:50:50.120 --> 0:50:53.480 but you probably can't say, like, today, this deer got 0:50:53.560 --> 0:50:56.040 c w D. Let's watch and see when he dies. 0:50:56.840 --> 0:50:59.920 We will never be able to truly identify the effect 0:51:00.080 --> 0:51:04.840 this moment, but we can track when mortality occurs, and 0:51:05.000 --> 0:51:08.640 we can look at at um sex and age ratios 0:51:08.680 --> 0:51:12.440 of animals that are harvested, and then we know how 0:51:12.520 --> 0:51:15.319 many of them those that are sampled, we know whether 0:51:15.400 --> 0:51:18.840 they were CWD positive CWD negative, so we can do 0:51:18.920 --> 0:51:22.320 a little back calculation. We do know from based on 0:51:22.480 --> 0:51:26.080 studies in in pen pen situations. If you take your 0:51:26.160 --> 0:51:30.360 garden variety, you know, dear uh, the incubation period for 0:51:30.480 --> 0:51:33.520 cw D is probably between eighteen and twenty four months, 0:51:33.560 --> 0:51:35.680 so you want to think it's maybe a two year disease. 0:51:36.239 --> 0:51:40.120 That animal looks perfectly healthy um all the way through 0:51:40.200 --> 0:51:43.920 that incubation period up until maybe six eight weeks before 0:51:44.440 --> 0:51:48.360 the end, and then they start really looking ragged and 0:51:48.680 --> 0:51:52.640 you think about the accumulation of that disease associated preonic 0:51:52.760 --> 0:51:55.640 protein in the brain. At first, it's probably having no 0:51:55.800 --> 0:51:59.000 effect on the animal at all. Then during the course 0:51:59.080 --> 0:52:01.920 of disease it looks like an exponential curve going up 0:52:02.040 --> 0:52:05.640 and towards the end, do you see that vast proliferation 0:52:05.800 --> 0:52:09.080 of of prion protein resulting in your ownal death? That 0:52:09.200 --> 0:52:13.560 animal cannot survive, So it's impossible. So in the average 0:52:13.560 --> 0:52:16.680 it's probably about a two year disease. But I want 0:52:16.719 --> 0:52:18.960 to go back if we can to. We talked about 0:52:19.040 --> 0:52:21.719 CWD hasn't always been there, Yeah, because I want to 0:52:21.800 --> 0:52:24.440 lay out people like why I'm asking about that is 0:52:25.320 --> 0:52:29.360 when and and Doug, you follow this a lot. You 0:52:29.600 --> 0:52:32.040 can speak up if this doesn't jibe, but so you're 0:52:32.200 --> 0:52:35.600 you're understanding of Hunter's understanding of this. When people when 0:52:35.640 --> 0:52:37.479 you get c w D in a hurt a dear 0:52:37.600 --> 0:52:41.360 herd out um, there's a lot of talk all of 0:52:41.400 --> 0:52:45.480 a sudden about trying to go in and radically coal 0:52:45.920 --> 0:52:50.239 the hurt, to lower numbers, or to do eradications in 0:52:50.360 --> 0:52:53.840 certain areas, to try to contain the disease, or to 0:52:53.920 --> 0:52:56.440 knock the numbers back so hard that it won't effectively 0:52:56.480 --> 0:52:59.239 pass some animal to animal. And this pisses a lot 0:52:59.280 --> 0:53:02.839 of guys off, because, as you know, anyone who likes 0:53:02.880 --> 0:53:05.920 to hunt knows you want as many animals around as possible. 0:53:05.960 --> 0:53:09.480 And so when people start hearing this chatter, they get 0:53:09.600 --> 0:53:12.279 uneasy feeling about it. They don't like where this is going. 0:53:12.840 --> 0:53:16.800 And I feel that it's a guy that feels that 0:53:17.000 --> 0:53:20.640 way who's likely to be the same guy who says 0:53:20.840 --> 0:53:26.960 it's always been here? Is that fair? Dog? I don't 0:53:27.280 --> 0:53:31.600 you've logged more hours thinking about this night. I don't 0:53:31.640 --> 0:53:36.400 know if more. I'm right up there with you. Yeah. No, 0:53:36.520 --> 0:53:37.960 But I'm not trying to do the science. I'm just 0:53:37.960 --> 0:53:40.360 trying to do the psychology of like the kind of 0:53:40.440 --> 0:53:43.520 guy who's who likes the idea that it's always been here. Well, 0:53:44.200 --> 0:53:46.279 I think that they're they're more likely to say, well, 0:53:46.320 --> 0:53:49.799 we can't do anything about it anyway. Yeah, that ends 0:53:49.880 --> 0:53:52.759 up being the attitude that I get as much as anything. Well, 0:53:52.920 --> 0:53:54.920 you know, it's too late, we're not going to eradicated 0:53:54.960 --> 0:53:57.600 all the like when they had the eradication effort or 0:53:58.080 --> 0:54:00.480 that was, you know, we had the eradication zone, really 0:54:00.600 --> 0:54:03.440 upset people because well, how are we gonna be able 0:54:03.440 --> 0:54:05.319 to do that? We're gonna kill all the deer became 0:54:05.360 --> 0:54:11.760 a national news story. Yeah, UM, that was not supported socially, 0:54:12.160 --> 0:54:18.200 was not supported. And so the same thing happened in Alberta. 0:54:18.640 --> 0:54:21.040 UM when c w D it looked like was was 0:54:21.200 --> 0:54:25.920 starting to march from Saskatchewan towards Alberta. UM. Alberta wanted 0:54:25.960 --> 0:54:29.480 to I wanted to stop it. And they were doing 0:54:29.560 --> 0:54:32.480 everything they can could at that point in time. So 0:54:32.640 --> 0:54:35.719 they were calling large numbers of animals, UM trying to 0:54:35.840 --> 0:54:39.000 keep CWD you know, on the Saskatchewan side or drive 0:54:39.040 --> 0:54:43.719 it back to the Saskatchewan side. They even UM went 0:54:43.840 --> 0:54:46.840 to a point where they used kind of an unconventional 0:54:47.960 --> 0:54:49.960 method to kill deer. They were doing it from an 0:54:50.000 --> 0:54:52.200 aerial platform. And it wasn't a tree stand, it was 0:54:52.239 --> 0:54:55.960 a helicopter. And so if you want to be effective 0:54:56.000 --> 0:54:58.880 at dropping at knocking down deer numbers, same as you know, 0:54:59.000 --> 0:55:01.359 if you were trying to kill Farrell Hoggs or something 0:55:01.440 --> 0:55:03.840 like that, do it from a helicopter. You can you 0:55:03.920 --> 0:55:05.759 can really take down a lot of deer in the 0:55:05.840 --> 0:55:08.560 course of a day or a week. Well, that was 0:55:09.080 --> 0:55:11.239 it looked like they were being quite effective. They were 0:55:11.280 --> 0:55:14.640 being very effective at dropping deer numbers and it looked 0:55:14.680 --> 0:55:18.120 like they had a chance. Well that that technique was 0:55:18.200 --> 0:55:22.320 not supported. The outfitters and the hunters in that area 0:55:22.719 --> 0:55:27.960 were offended, um that the ministry in Alberta was taking 0:55:28.040 --> 0:55:31.200 that many deer for something that they didn't consider to 0:55:31.280 --> 0:55:33.960 be that big of a problem to start with. And 0:55:34.160 --> 0:55:38.279 so that social pressure led to political pressure, led to 0:55:38.960 --> 0:55:45.719 the program being basically defunded, and so Alberta stopped doing 0:55:45.800 --> 0:55:48.320 that aggressive management to c w D. And if you 0:55:48.400 --> 0:55:51.080 take a look at the at the at the map 0:55:51.239 --> 0:55:53.320 that you know I put together of the of the 0:55:53.600 --> 0:55:56.520 you know, known distribution of c w D, or you 0:55:56.560 --> 0:55:59.719 look at the Alberta ministry UM stuff, you'll see c 0:55:59.840 --> 0:56:03.719 to be the marching westward and it's now established and 0:56:03.960 --> 0:56:06.680 it's gonna be very challenging to to do anything with. 0:56:07.120 --> 0:56:10.520 There's another thing I've heard, uh from hunter's and that is, 0:56:10.640 --> 0:56:12.719 well they've had it out in Colorado this whole time 0:56:12.840 --> 0:56:20.919 and it's stabilized. No, I have no yeah, I stabilization 0:56:20.960 --> 0:56:24.520 of the population whatever were it's it's no big deal. 0:56:24.840 --> 0:56:28.040 In other words, it hasn't hurt the deer population. That's 0:56:28.080 --> 0:56:31.640 what I hear on a regular basis. UM and that 0:56:31.719 --> 0:56:34.800 comes back to that that situation, you know, trying to 0:56:34.880 --> 0:56:38.960 identify has it always been here in places where disease 0:56:39.000 --> 0:56:43.200 has been the longest. We have now documented population level 0:56:43.280 --> 0:56:49.000 impacts in localized geographic areas where CWD is clearly impacting 0:56:49.719 --> 0:56:54.359 numerically the deer herd. We've seen cases now documented peer 0:56:54.480 --> 0:56:59.480 viewed literature period science in mule deer in Colorado. We've 0:56:59.560 --> 0:57:03.040 seen um white tailed deer in uh in an area 0:57:03.080 --> 0:57:07.520 in the South Converse County in Wyoming, and documented in 0:57:07.840 --> 0:57:11.480 North American elk in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. 0:57:12.920 --> 0:57:17.560 So if this disease had been here always, we know 0:57:17.800 --> 0:57:20.080 that c w D does two things really well. It 0:57:20.240 --> 0:57:23.800 spreads geographically and it grows in prevalence. When the prevalence 0:57:23.840 --> 0:57:28.720 gets high enough, there's every likelihood that it will impact populations. 0:57:29.480 --> 0:57:34.040 Is there any evidence anywhere that this has occurred historically? 0:57:34.760 --> 0:57:37.680 There's none. There is no evidence that a t SC 0:57:37.880 --> 0:57:41.280 has been out there and has caused local or regional 0:57:41.440 --> 0:57:46.280 population declines historically. And an interesting thing about c w D, 0:57:46.520 --> 0:57:54.840 but I mean, we'd only have if we're lucky. You 0:57:54.920 --> 0:57:56.800 know what, what we got a hundred years to draw on. 0:57:59.240 --> 0:58:00.840 I mean that stuff have been going on. You know, 0:58:00.920 --> 0:58:03.240 you have no idea, but over the last let's say, 0:58:03.280 --> 0:58:05.280 say like over the last hundred years, he might have 0:58:05.320 --> 0:58:08.120 been able to measure something like that or realize something 0:58:08.200 --> 0:58:13.160 that was occurring. Okay, but what will stop cw D. 0:58:13.720 --> 0:58:18.040 To date, we know of no biological feature which will 0:58:18.120 --> 0:58:20.680 stop it. So if it had been there two hundred, 0:58:20.720 --> 0:58:23.920 three hundred, five hundred years ago, there wouldn't be one 0:58:23.960 --> 0:58:26.920 little pocket. Yeah. Why, you know, we've seen, you know, 0:58:26.960 --> 0:58:30.840 we've seen small pockets of disease grow into larger pockets 0:58:30.920 --> 0:58:33.160 of disease, and none of those pockets has vanished. No, 0:58:33.400 --> 0:58:36.040 it's never like any area that's had it has never 0:58:36.120 --> 0:58:38.840 gotten rid of it. C w D, as far as 0:58:38.880 --> 0:58:42.280 I'm aware, has not gone away anywhere other than potentially 0:58:42.320 --> 0:58:46.120 in a captive facility where we depopulate that facility. So 0:58:46.280 --> 0:58:50.800 there's no you know, their populations don't seem to adapt um. 0:58:51.720 --> 0:58:55.280 There does not seem to be any strong genetic selection 0:58:55.600 --> 0:58:59.960 for resistance to disease. Now, there are genotypes in each 0:59:00.040 --> 0:59:02.720 of the three main species white tailed deer, mule deer, 0:59:02.840 --> 0:59:07.960 and elk that seemed to have some level of quote 0:59:08.200 --> 0:59:13.160 unquote resistance that resistance, they seem a little less likely 0:59:13.320 --> 0:59:15.880 to get c w D, but they can get c 0:59:16.200 --> 0:59:19.360 w D, and what it does is manifest through a 0:59:19.600 --> 0:59:23.640 longer incubation period. So when I said your garden variety, dear, 0:59:24.120 --> 0:59:27.360 it's about a two year disease in these in these 0:59:27.480 --> 0:59:30.480 resistant geno types, it seems like it's maybe a five 0:59:30.640 --> 0:59:33.360 year disease. So that gives them enough time to that 0:59:33.440 --> 0:59:35.680 gives many of them enough time to have the life 0:59:35.720 --> 0:59:39.080 they would have had to end, like they would have 0:59:39.160 --> 0:59:41.560 had reproduced and then die from the ship that kills 0:59:42.320 --> 0:59:45.000 year without them ever knowing that they had it. Like 0:59:45.080 --> 0:59:46.560 if you told me I had a disease it's going 0:59:46.600 --> 0:59:49.000 to be fatal in one years, I'd be like, yes, 0:59:50.000 --> 0:59:52.760 that's cool, get in line, right, there's the plenty of 0:59:52.800 --> 0:59:54.880 stars gonna kill me between now and then. Okay, But 0:59:55.640 --> 0:59:58.640 let's think about if that disease you have, if they 0:59:58.800 --> 1:00:02.040 over the course of that hun years eighty years of 1:00:02.200 --> 1:00:05.720 that you're able to actively give that disease to other people. 1:00:07.360 --> 1:00:13.080 And so that's kind of the difference. So that dear Dearing, 1:00:13.680 --> 1:00:17.040 the garden variety deer with c w D, where I 1:00:17.080 --> 1:00:20.640 said that clinical, you know, it's it's it's inapparent in 1:00:20.720 --> 1:00:24.920 the animal, at least to us for maybe twenty twenty 1:00:24.960 --> 1:00:27.960 two months, and then it's sick and it's and it dies. 1:00:28.800 --> 1:00:32.960 That animal is shedding infectious agents, so it's infectious. It's 1:00:33.040 --> 1:00:37.720 capable of transmitting disease, probably as early as three months 1:00:37.920 --> 1:00:42.440 after it gets disease. So for the majority of the 1:00:42.560 --> 1:00:45.600 time frame that animal has c w D, it's able 1:00:45.680 --> 1:00:48.960 to give that disease to others and to shed infectious 1:00:49.000 --> 1:00:52.320 agent out into the environment where it may persist for years, 1:00:52.560 --> 1:00:58.360 potentially up to decades. Now that that resistant genotype, he's 1:00:58.400 --> 1:01:01.400 got a five year version CWD instead of a two 1:01:01.520 --> 1:01:05.360 year so that deer might be shedding infectious agent for 1:01:05.520 --> 1:01:08.959 maybe four years or even longer before it gets sick 1:01:09.040 --> 1:01:11.400 and dies. So although it's good for him, it's bad 1:01:11.480 --> 1:01:14.280 for everybody else. It's good for him or her, and 1:01:14.400 --> 1:01:17.520 it might be good for their progeny if they you know, 1:01:17.680 --> 1:01:20.440 if that if that trait breeds, true, it might be 1:01:20.560 --> 1:01:23.000 good for their progeny, but it could be bad for 1:01:23.040 --> 1:01:26.760 everybody else. And we call that a typhoid Marry syndrome. Okay, 1:01:26.840 --> 1:01:29.760 it's not dying from it, but it's spread and sings 1:01:29.800 --> 1:01:32.040 that are probably gonna die from it quicker than he would. 1:01:32.400 --> 1:01:36.800 Right now, there's another interesting thing. These gena types that 1:01:36.960 --> 1:01:42.080 are supposedly resistant to c w D are incredibly rare 1:01:42.640 --> 1:01:46.400 out in a wild population. They might be five percent 1:01:46.480 --> 1:01:49.840 of the animals or even less. Okay, So if this 1:01:50.080 --> 1:01:55.080 was a desirable trait, geno typic trait, one would expect that, 1:01:55.440 --> 1:01:59.919 at a minimum, it be in a larger proportion. Always 1:02:00.520 --> 1:02:03.080 if yeah, if that, if that gene had had an 1:02:03.120 --> 1:02:07.160 opportunity to proliferate in response to disease, they ought to 1:02:07.200 --> 1:02:11.040 be the dominant genotypes out there. But they're not. They're very, 1:02:11.200 --> 1:02:15.200 very rare. So it's interesting because you know, some folks 1:02:15.240 --> 1:02:18.120 in the captive servit industry have proposed, Hey, why don't 1:02:18.160 --> 1:02:22.760 we start breeding these resistant genotypes and and infiltrate the 1:02:22.840 --> 1:02:27.520 populations with them. So we'll replace the susceptible animals with 1:02:27.680 --> 1:02:32.560 the resistant animals and everything will be just hunky dorry. Right. So, 1:02:32.880 --> 1:02:36.280 the observations of these animals well, Number one, if if, 1:02:36.520 --> 1:02:40.400 if that genotype is really rare, it suggests that that 1:02:40.560 --> 1:02:44.000 animal may not be fit, may not be a genetically 1:02:44.120 --> 1:02:49.240 fit animal. In other characteristics, that geno that CWD resistance 1:02:49.320 --> 1:02:52.160 may be tied to other characteristics that are that may 1:02:52.200 --> 1:02:55.360 be deleterious to animals. Okay, there's got to be an 1:02:55.400 --> 1:02:59.720 explanation for why that genotype is really rare. And researchers 1:02:59.760 --> 1:03:03.360 and Alorado were able to to actually breed up some 1:03:03.760 --> 1:03:07.680 of the mule deer with the resistant genotypes, and their 1:03:07.760 --> 1:03:12.400 conclusions were that while these deer uh looked like mule deer, 1:03:13.400 --> 1:03:18.400 acted largely like mule deer, they're highly technically, they weren't 1:03:18.480 --> 1:03:24.240 quite right. These animals just didn't behave the way that 1:03:24.600 --> 1:03:28.360 there their wild type brethren are. So now let's put 1:03:28.480 --> 1:03:31.640 that animal in a wild system where you've got things 1:03:31.720 --> 1:03:38.000 like you've got giant antlers. Where put put that animal 1:03:38.160 --> 1:03:42.440 who is just not quite right behaviorally into a system 1:03:42.520 --> 1:03:47.920 with predators over historical time, and maybe there you can 1:03:47.960 --> 1:03:52.200 see why that animal was selected against that that TSC 1:03:52.480 --> 1:03:57.800 resistance may be tied to other phenotypic characteristics which are 1:03:57.960 --> 1:04:00.640 less than desirable for an animal who has to be 1:04:01.080 --> 1:04:03.680 you know, has to be a hundred percent of ten 1:04:03.720 --> 1:04:07.960 percent of a deer in order to survive. So it all, 1:04:08.120 --> 1:04:11.000 you know, kind of boiled together that that resistance quote 1:04:11.080 --> 1:04:16.680 unquote resistance. Um, it might not be the panacea that 1:04:16.840 --> 1:04:21.480 we're that we're hoping for the cure of for well, 1:04:21.520 --> 1:04:25.600 there won't be a cure. We haven't found one yet. 1:04:25.920 --> 1:04:29.000 But what would it even look like. Well, researchers are 1:04:29.120 --> 1:04:33.160 working on vaccines. Okay, yeah, yeah, but I mean, but 1:04:33.680 --> 1:04:38.120 I are you gonna go vaccinate all the year and 1:04:38.160 --> 1:04:42.560 then keep doing it? Well, that's that's one thought. Now. 1:04:42.960 --> 1:04:47.120 Vaccine people have worked on vaccines, communic vaccines. Has there 1:04:47.160 --> 1:04:50.720 ever been a communicable vaccine a communical oh, where you 1:04:50.720 --> 1:04:55.800 would put it in put it in as the vaccination 1:04:55.920 --> 1:04:57.800 just by letting me sleep on its couch. That's an 1:04:57.840 --> 1:05:01.400 interesting theory. That's an interesting theory. I'm not aware of 1:05:01.520 --> 1:05:05.200 any that has been effective that way. Yeah, there you go. 1:05:06.520 --> 1:05:09.240 It might be on it. You might be on it. Um. 1:05:09.480 --> 1:05:12.480 There have been a number of vaccine candidates, uh for 1:05:12.800 --> 1:05:15.000 t sc s. In general, it would be great to 1:05:15.080 --> 1:05:21.680 be able to vaccinate cattle, sheep, humans for TSC we 1:05:21.760 --> 1:05:25.880 have not. Scientists has not been able to administer. If 1:05:25.920 --> 1:05:29.400 you had the miracle of the vaccine administering it to cattle, 1:05:29.440 --> 1:05:34.760 administering to sheep, administring to humans, it's plausible and and 1:05:34.880 --> 1:05:38.760 certainly it's not out of question that it could be 1:05:38.920 --> 1:05:42.760 done with free ranching animals as well. Some vaccines can 1:05:42.920 --> 1:05:47.560 be built into oral based formulations where we could put 1:05:47.680 --> 1:05:51.040 it into something that deer would eat, spread it, you know, 1:05:51.240 --> 1:05:55.840 probably from helicopters or or airplanes across the landscape and 1:05:56.040 --> 1:06:00.360 vaccinate animals to prevent them from getting CWD. But you'd 1:06:00.360 --> 1:06:02.520 have to do it over vast geographic carry, and you'd 1:06:02.560 --> 1:06:04.960 have to do it for a really long time decades 1:06:06.160 --> 1:06:11.200 vacine for vaccine. But there are instances where with other 1:06:11.280 --> 1:06:16.280 diseases where that's been effective. UM with rabies, with raccoon rabies, 1:06:16.360 --> 1:06:19.959 there's an oral bait um that has been created looks 1:06:20.000 --> 1:06:26.040 like little dog biscuits. UM. Raccoon rabies historically was isolated 1:06:26.080 --> 1:06:30.080 to the southeastern States, and it was moved up in 1:06:30.360 --> 1:06:34.080 a little bit further north along the eastern seaboard UM 1:06:34.240 --> 1:06:39.120 either by UM, by conservationists themselves, or by state agencies 1:06:39.320 --> 1:06:44.720 who were relocating raccoons to UM supplant you know, populations 1:06:44.760 --> 1:06:48.840 that have been reduced by over harvest inadvertently. That's something 1:06:48.880 --> 1:06:52.000 that's happened absolutely. People have had people have had to 1:06:52.040 --> 1:06:56.480 do raccoon reintroductions. Yeah, historically, I mean, game agencies have 1:06:56.720 --> 1:07:01.160 have restored darn near everything over time. Yeah, I thought 1:07:01.400 --> 1:07:04.840 raccoons were an exception there, just because they've enjoyed a 1:07:05.080 --> 1:07:08.080 general like in the time that we've been keeping track 1:07:08.160 --> 1:07:12.000 of such things, they've enjoyed a general northward and westward spread. 1:07:13.680 --> 1:07:16.960 Humans have helped a little bit, yea. They were like, 1:07:17.160 --> 1:07:20.360 why are there fox squirrels in Missool, Monta And and 1:07:20.560 --> 1:07:24.520 so inadvertently raccoon and rabies was moved from the farther 1:07:24.680 --> 1:07:29.480 in the southeast up into up into the Virginia's And so, 1:07:29.760 --> 1:07:32.560 as a good pathogen does, it will try and take 1:07:32.600 --> 1:07:37.640 advantage of a naive, susceptible host population, and raccoon rabies 1:07:37.640 --> 1:07:40.880 has moved straight up the eastern seaboard where now you 1:07:40.960 --> 1:07:43.760 know it's it's not uncommon to find cases in places 1:07:43.840 --> 1:07:46.680 like Central Park in New York, Okay. And and the 1:07:46.760 --> 1:07:49.960 fear with that is it's a it's a zooonosis, where 1:07:51.200 --> 1:07:55.160 that a disease that transmits between animals and humans and 1:07:55.320 --> 1:07:59.160 sometimes back. By definition, that's what a zoonosis is, and 1:07:59.320 --> 1:08:01.800 it's a face in rabies is a fatal disease in 1:08:01.920 --> 1:08:07.040 human to the raccoon, to other all mammalian hosts. So 1:08:07.440 --> 1:08:11.440 now raccoon rabies seems to it wants to move westward 1:08:11.520 --> 1:08:15.440 as well. And so there is a very massive program 1:08:15.520 --> 1:08:18.639 that's been ongoing for quite some time where every year, 1:08:19.240 --> 1:08:23.560 these vaccine laden baits are dropped from aircraft across a 1:08:23.720 --> 1:08:26.760 swath all the way from I believe it's a long 1:08:26.880 --> 1:08:30.920 lake erie down along the Appalachians down to the Southern 1:08:31.040 --> 1:08:34.479 States right now. It goes on every year, and so 1:08:34.960 --> 1:08:42.240 these these baits are dropped across. It's it's neat stuff, 1:08:42.439 --> 1:08:45.880 but it works. So you're trying to create a vaccinated 1:08:46.000 --> 1:08:50.160 path where the raccoons and other animals have been vaccinated 1:08:50.200 --> 1:08:54.880 against rabies, so even if they are exposed to the 1:08:55.000 --> 1:08:58.880 rabies virus, they are not no longer susceptible to it. 1:08:59.479 --> 1:09:07.760 A serious that's fascinating, absolutely, and it's and it's one 1:09:07.800 --> 1:09:10.760 of those instances said like you come back and say, 1:09:11.120 --> 1:09:14.639 is it possible that c w D could be managed 1:09:14.720 --> 1:09:19.760 sometime in the future, by you're making me feel like 1:09:20.120 --> 1:09:22.800 it's even the vaccine doesn't exist and it might be 1:09:23.800 --> 1:09:27.479 possible there decades or whatever. I'm feeling it. I'm feeling 1:09:27.520 --> 1:09:30.960 it on the idea that you could in fact maybe 1:09:31.240 --> 1:09:33.840 so then it would be expensive. So then as a 1:09:33.920 --> 1:09:36.600 hunter in an area whereas we were talking earlier that 1:09:36.760 --> 1:09:42.080 it's moving up through, I'm feeling and a landowner and feeling, uh, 1:09:43.040 --> 1:09:46.280 I feel like an obligation to do what I can 1:09:46.840 --> 1:09:49.960 and and if I can spread the word of let's 1:09:50.000 --> 1:09:52.400 at least we're not gonna we're not gonna get rid 1:09:52.439 --> 1:09:54.000 of it. How the hunter says, oh, we're not gonna 1:09:54.000 --> 1:09:55.960 get rid of it. If they've had it, its stabilizes 1:09:55.960 --> 1:09:58.720 all that. I mean, I feel like it's our obligation 1:09:58.800 --> 1:10:01.519 to slow it down. So to give that to buy 1:10:01.600 --> 1:10:08.360 that time, that's that's a great point in that. Okay, sorry, 1:10:12.360 --> 1:10:15.200 let me give you another quick example of vaccine that works. 1:10:15.960 --> 1:10:18.320 This one is is pretty interesting. This is one that's 1:10:18.320 --> 1:10:21.760 been developed at the National Wildlife Health Center. So it 1:10:22.040 --> 1:10:27.320 was thought, um that black footed ferrets were um extinct. 1:10:27.640 --> 1:10:32.920 They popped up in a guy's dog carried one up 1:10:32.960 --> 1:10:35.639 to the door. Yeh. Basically turns out they're not extinct. 1:10:35.680 --> 1:10:39.440 They're not extinct. So they brought that population into captivity 1:10:39.520 --> 1:10:42.200 and bred it up. Okay, and then they put these 1:10:42.280 --> 1:10:46.120 animals back out on the landscape. And now, if you 1:10:46.400 --> 1:10:49.880 are a black footed ferret, you pretty much eat one thing, 1:10:51.120 --> 1:10:55.000 prairie dogs. That's what you eat, all right. And so 1:10:55.240 --> 1:10:57.680 if we put black footed ferrets back out on the 1:10:57.760 --> 1:11:00.680 landscape and and on fishing, wild Life Service in the 1:11:00.720 --> 1:11:03.800 state natural resource agencies have done just that along some 1:11:03.960 --> 1:11:08.360 of the tribes as well. Now, what happens if plague 1:11:09.560 --> 1:11:15.320 comes into that population and wipes out of the prairie 1:11:15.400 --> 1:11:19.200 dog colony where you live. Well, either A you're gonna 1:11:19.240 --> 1:11:23.439 starve to death or be you're gonna die of plague yourself, right, Okay. 1:11:23.560 --> 1:11:26.559 So this is a limiting factor when we talk about 1:11:26.840 --> 1:11:31.920 the reintroducing the most endangered mammal in North America, putting 1:11:31.960 --> 1:11:35.519 it back on the landscape. If your food source dies 1:11:35.600 --> 1:11:43.559 of plague, you die too, Okay. So, researchers at National 1:11:43.560 --> 1:11:46.799 Wildlife Health Center, in conjunction with lots of other places, 1:11:47.520 --> 1:11:51.280 over the course of about a decade, developed a vaccine 1:11:51.920 --> 1:11:56.519 which works. It works in both prairie dogs and it 1:11:56.680 --> 1:11:59.960 works in blackfooted ferrets. I know a lot of ranchers 1:12:00.000 --> 1:12:02.080 who are gonna be disappointed to hear about that. Yeah, 1:12:02.160 --> 1:12:05.479 they could be. But if we're talking about endangered species 1:12:06.080 --> 1:12:11.840 reintroductions more making a joke about a certain mentality. There 1:12:11.960 --> 1:12:15.360 is that mentality. So anyway, now the researchers they were 1:12:15.520 --> 1:12:20.080 able to give an intramuscular injection of the vaccine into 1:12:20.800 --> 1:12:25.280 into the ferrets and protect them. But now, how do 1:12:25.360 --> 1:12:27.880 you go out and you capture all the prairie dogs 1:12:27.880 --> 1:12:30.000 and give them each a shot. It's analogous to what 1:12:30.080 --> 1:12:32.320 you're saying with deer with c w D. It just 1:12:32.560 --> 1:12:36.800 can't be done logistically. So the researchers were able to 1:12:36.960 --> 1:12:42.480 create an oral bait, and actually they tried different flavors 1:12:42.600 --> 1:12:46.040 to find out which the prairie dogs preferred. It turns out, 1:12:46.160 --> 1:12:50.000 guess what they like, peanut butter. So they created little 1:12:50.080 --> 1:12:55.519 bits vaccine latent baits, maybe a centimeter on on on edge, 1:12:56.000 --> 1:12:58.680 cubic little bits. And so it turns out we can 1:12:58.760 --> 1:13:01.599 put these out on the land escape in prairie dog towns. 1:13:01.960 --> 1:13:07.520 The prey dogs consume them, and they vaccinate themselves thereby, 1:13:07.880 --> 1:13:12.720 you know, at the population level, making them uh now 1:13:13.000 --> 1:13:17.360 no longer susceptible to play. And those efforts are probably 1:13:17.479 --> 1:13:19.800 focused in areas where you're trying to recover, you're trying 1:13:19.840 --> 1:13:24.800 to receive restore the black footed ferrets. You know, a 1:13:24.840 --> 1:13:29.920 little tidbet for people listeners. Um the most, I would 1:13:30.000 --> 1:13:35.479 the most universal attractant. It doesn't matter what you're trying 1:13:35.520 --> 1:13:39.160 to catch. Peanut butter molasses mixed together. Catch me on 1:13:39.280 --> 1:13:41.439 that stuff. I think, I really think it's the most. 1:13:41.640 --> 1:13:46.200 I think beaver castor is regarded as like a seemly 1:13:46.240 --> 1:13:49.160 almost universal attractant to anything that likes to eat meat. 1:13:50.680 --> 1:13:56.120 And two carnivores beaver castor and two herbivores, peanut butter 1:13:56.240 --> 1:13:59.519 molasses mixed together is like a universal attracting. Absolutely. I 1:13:59.600 --> 1:14:03.240 did a lot a small mammal trapping, you know, many 1:14:03.320 --> 1:14:06.680 many years ago, and you put peanut butter inside of 1:14:06.680 --> 1:14:09.720 a little you know, sherman live trap, and you end 1:14:09.800 --> 1:14:11.600 up with a mouse or a ole in there that 1:14:11.920 --> 1:14:13.800 they roll around in the peanut butter, and then you've 1:14:13.800 --> 1:14:16.280 got to deal with this grease covered animal. You mix 1:14:16.320 --> 1:14:19.000 the peanut butter with rolled oats, so that's the that's 1:14:19.040 --> 1:14:23.400 the component that you didn't have classes and and and oatmeal. 1:14:23.520 --> 1:14:26.880 Peanut's got stay in power and the rolled holts. Yeah, 1:14:26.880 --> 1:14:28.920 it probably gives them something to actually they can carry 1:14:28.960 --> 1:14:31.800 it off to you know, yeah, well, and and it 1:14:31.880 --> 1:14:34.040 absorbs some of the grease in the in the peanut 1:14:34.080 --> 1:14:36.880 butter Bailey come back to that, that prairie dog, in 1:14:37.040 --> 1:14:40.800 blackfooted ferrets. So there are very few success stories when 1:14:40.880 --> 1:14:44.240 dealing with wildlife disease in general. You know, if wildlife 1:14:44.280 --> 1:14:49.000 disease becomes established in a free ranging population, it's very 1:14:49.120 --> 1:14:53.080 pretty tough. Success stories are limited. But it's really interesting 1:14:53.439 --> 1:14:56.880 through the advent and the development of this vaccine and 1:14:56.960 --> 1:15:00.680 this oral vaccinated you know, bait being able to put 1:15:00.800 --> 1:15:04.120 that out there on the landscape, it's likely that we 1:15:04.280 --> 1:15:10.639 will be able to remove or largely remove plague as 1:15:10.680 --> 1:15:14.840 an issue with reintroduction and restoration of the most endangered 1:15:14.880 --> 1:15:17.840 mano in North America. So it's a success story, and 1:15:17.880 --> 1:15:25.120 it's one it's rare, it's when right. So I heard 1:15:25.600 --> 1:15:32.439 two different things. One was long sorry uh no. One 1:15:32.680 --> 1:15:36.320 was that with the raccoons, essentially there was a band 1:15:36.640 --> 1:15:40.000 that was established to stop the disease from going further. 1:15:41.560 --> 1:15:43.280 And I think how that could apply to c w 1:15:43.400 --> 1:15:47.519 d IF and when a vaccine is developed, so you 1:15:47.600 --> 1:15:51.240 can do that band a containment band. And then this 1:15:52.120 --> 1:15:56.880 with the blackfooted ferret is stopping it in a particular 1:15:57.479 --> 1:16:00.360 or yeah, stopping in in a particular area. So those 1:16:00.400 --> 1:16:02.920 are really two success stories, but there are two very 1:16:02.960 --> 1:16:06.160 different ones that are very very different. And it comes 1:16:06.160 --> 1:16:08.599 back to your point, does it make sense to try 1:16:08.680 --> 1:16:13.600 and minimize the impact and the geographic stretch where c 1:16:13.880 --> 1:16:16.680 w D is And I think you you hit the 1:16:16.760 --> 1:16:18.880 name one last thing before that. I want to go 1:16:18.960 --> 1:16:21.200 into that and end with that. No, I want to. 1:16:21.320 --> 1:16:24.680 I want to go into that full on, total move 1:16:24.760 --> 1:16:29.919 into it. But first this is it's gonna be impossible 1:16:29.960 --> 1:16:34.240 to answer. Um. No, you can answer the first part. 1:16:34.240 --> 1:16:36.760 I'll give you an easy to answer one. Do we 1:16:36.920 --> 1:16:39.240 know of a case where a dude has caught c 1:16:39.600 --> 1:16:42.000 w D from eating deer? Okay, So you wanna talk 1:16:42.000 --> 1:16:44.920 about human risk? I think it's appropriate. It's a it's 1:16:44.920 --> 1:16:48.759 a topic that everybody's interested in. I think most people 1:16:48.920 --> 1:16:51.000 that's kind of where they end up when they're thinking 1:16:51.040 --> 1:16:55.200 about that. I'm happy to discuss this, So todate there 1:16:55.439 --> 1:17:01.439 is no recognized instance where a human has contracted a 1:17:01.560 --> 1:17:06.479 t SC associated with consumption of of c w D 1:17:06.600 --> 1:17:11.920 afflicted deer. Okay, So from an epidemiological standpoint, it does 1:17:12.000 --> 1:17:17.680 not look like it has happened. Okay. Now, a tremendous 1:17:17.800 --> 1:17:22.200 amount of scientific research has been done, many different studies, 1:17:22.320 --> 1:17:27.160 many different ways, and the bottom line, if I had 1:17:27.200 --> 1:17:30.479 to boil down all of that research suggests that the 1:17:30.720 --> 1:17:36.120 chances of transmission of their CWD crossing the species barrier 1:17:36.240 --> 1:17:41.800 into humans is small. It's remote, but it is not zero. 1:17:42.840 --> 1:17:46.759 It was very remote in the case of BSc crossing 1:17:46.840 --> 1:17:50.400 over into humans, and to date we now know of 1:17:50.520 --> 1:17:55.240 over two hundred fatal cases of variant kreutz feldiacos disease 1:17:55.320 --> 1:18:01.120 in humans associated with consumption of BSc contaminated beef. Now, 1:18:01.160 --> 1:18:05.080 they entered, they put a lot of beef in that systems, 1:18:05.600 --> 1:18:08.439 Probably about at least three quarters of a million animals 1:18:08.560 --> 1:18:12.639 entered into the human food chain, resulting in approximately two 1:18:13.200 --> 1:18:16.880 cases known to date. So the conversion rate was very 1:18:17.080 --> 1:18:23.000 very small. Now, in for if we want to kind of, 1:18:23.160 --> 1:18:26.439 you know, generalize, if we said, in in experiments in 1:18:26.760 --> 1:18:30.760 test tube type environments, we can see c w D 1:18:31.680 --> 1:18:36.920 causing a conversion of human normal prion protein to the 1:18:37.040 --> 1:18:42.519 disease associated form at about the same rate as BSc does. 1:18:43.320 --> 1:18:48.200 It's reasonable to anticipate that it's not unreasonable to think 1:18:48.280 --> 1:18:51.920 that it could happen, said, the risk is very low. 1:18:52.080 --> 1:18:56.639 We can't quantify that risk exactly precisely. The risk is low, 1:18:57.439 --> 1:19:00.560 but it's not zero. Same thing can he said, with 1:19:00.880 --> 1:19:06.320 the chances for transmission into livestock. Okay, deer are out 1:19:06.360 --> 1:19:09.000 there commingling with cattle today, and if deer f c 1:19:09.320 --> 1:19:15.240 w D, that's happening not far from here, not not, 1:19:15.439 --> 1:19:19.519 it's not unfeasible. So there's interaction. Plus that the deer 1:19:19.640 --> 1:19:22.719 are shedding infectious agent into the environment and the cattle 1:19:22.760 --> 1:19:27.320 are are exposed to that, just like when humans are 1:19:27.439 --> 1:19:31.679 consuming venicine. If it's a CWD positive deer, those humans 1:19:31.800 --> 1:19:38.080 are exposed to the infectious agent. Exposure is not the 1:19:38.160 --> 1:19:42.840 same as transmission. I said, the chances are low, they 1:19:42.880 --> 1:19:45.839 are not zero. But now let's add to that equation 1:19:45.960 --> 1:19:50.639 just a little bit. In a state of Wisconsin alone, 1:19:51.280 --> 1:19:55.040 last year, there were four hundred, about four hundred and 1:19:55.120 --> 1:20:00.919 fifty positives detected. Probably the majority of them were consumed 1:20:01.040 --> 1:20:04.840 by the hunter that killed them. Okay, it seems that 1:20:05.040 --> 1:20:06.760 you know at least at least some of them that's 1:20:06.800 --> 1:20:11.160 positives detective, positives detective. So did you guys follow up 1:20:11.200 --> 1:20:13.120 with those hunters because I heard from a guy today 1:20:13.600 --> 1:20:16.760 who his family killed five four were positive and he 1:20:16.880 --> 1:20:21.200 was sketching out for me. Um, he's eating his His 1:20:21.320 --> 1:20:24.000 girlfriend's pissed at him. She won't eat it. They had 1:20:24.000 --> 1:20:26.360 a friend that wanted a deer. He want up declining 1:20:26.439 --> 1:20:30.320 the deer. This is right here in southwest Wisconsin. Do 1:20:30.360 --> 1:20:32.160 you guys follow up to be like, so, what happened 1:20:32.160 --> 1:20:36.120 to the deer? The DNR, Wisconsin Department and Natural Resources 1:20:36.200 --> 1:20:41.599 does follow up, and with every positive test, they provide 1:20:41.640 --> 1:20:44.160 information back to the hunter and provide them an option. 1:20:44.240 --> 1:20:46.960 They give them information and an option on what they 1:20:47.040 --> 1:20:49.040 want to do, and they obviously allow him to opt 1:20:49.120 --> 1:20:52.400 out of the Wanton waste laws. Right, Certainly, certainly they 1:20:52.680 --> 1:20:54.320 would they would come pick it up, or at least 1:20:54.360 --> 1:20:58.679 at one point they would actually come CWD positive material. 1:20:58.760 --> 1:21:01.840 Nobody's gonna go after you for that, but I would 1:21:01.920 --> 1:21:04.639 offer up that at least, you know, probably the majority 1:21:04.680 --> 1:21:07.760 of individuals now and I'm not I don't have their data, 1:21:08.720 --> 1:21:13.000 but I think the majority of individuals now would say, okay, thanks, 1:21:13.360 --> 1:21:19.040 but we've we've opted to consume it now, which but 1:21:19.240 --> 1:21:22.600 now let's think about it. The amount of surveillance that 1:21:22.720 --> 1:21:25.120 we do is much less than it used to be. 1:21:26.600 --> 1:21:29.240 First first few years in the southern part of the 1:21:29.360 --> 1:21:32.920 of Wisconsin. You know, the DNR was testing twenty thousand deer. 1:21:33.640 --> 1:21:39.800 This last year tested you know, around seven thousands. Uh. 1:21:40.160 --> 1:21:42.439 I really don't have the funding to do the to 1:21:42.520 --> 1:21:49.479 do the surveillance. Yeah, So it's not that hard to 1:21:49.760 --> 1:21:53.560 do some back of the envelope calculations. If we know 1:21:54.200 --> 1:21:57.600 what prevalence generally looks like. If we know what what 1:21:57.720 --> 1:22:01.160 prevalence generally looks like in a county, we know what 1:22:01.400 --> 1:22:05.120 harvest looks like in a county, So we can kind 1:22:05.120 --> 1:22:08.240 of figure out crude back of the envelope and identify 1:22:08.720 --> 1:22:13.519 maybe how many CBD positive deer were killed by hunters. 1:22:14.240 --> 1:22:16.479 I can come up pretty easily with you know, a 1:22:16.560 --> 1:22:19.800 couple of thousand CWD positive animals killed in the state 1:22:19.840 --> 1:22:23.519 of Wisconsin every year. Now, if only four hundred of 1:22:23.600 --> 1:22:27.960 them were tested positive, that means that for every test 1:22:28.040 --> 1:22:32.040 positive animal, there were probably three or ish three ish 1:22:32.800 --> 1:22:36.160 that we're not tested at all. So all of those 1:22:36.320 --> 1:22:39.120 you would think are going home being consumed by the 1:22:39.200 --> 1:22:43.000 hunters and their families. So when I talked about the risk, 1:22:43.400 --> 1:22:47.559 so the the amount of exposure doesn't change the risk 1:22:47.760 --> 1:22:50.680 to any one of those people. But if we think 1:22:50.720 --> 1:22:54.280 about if you had a scientific experiment, or maybe even 1:22:54.400 --> 1:22:58.040 not a scientific experiment, maybe buy lottery tickets things like that, 1:22:59.080 --> 1:23:02.360 the odds that any one of us buying you know 1:23:02.520 --> 1:23:05.479 that winning or in this case, that losing lottery ticket 1:23:06.120 --> 1:23:11.040 is extremely remote, But if you keep running that experiment 1:23:11.360 --> 1:23:15.920 enough times, you might expect an alternate outcome. At the 1:23:16.000 --> 1:23:19.720 end of the day, somebody wins the lottery. In the 1:23:19.800 --> 1:23:24.800 case of BSc, at least two hundred people got the 1:23:24.880 --> 1:23:29.439 bad lottery ticket where they developed disease from consuming BSc 1:23:29.600 --> 1:23:34.360 positive positive animals. So we keep challenging this system. You know, 1:23:34.439 --> 1:23:38.040 the odds are low from any for anyone individual, incredibly low. 1:23:38.120 --> 1:23:40.120 There's lots of things we do on a day to 1:23:40.240 --> 1:23:43.720 day basis which are much more risky than probably than 1:23:43.800 --> 1:23:49.920 consuming CWD positive venison, but were going along under the 1:23:49.960 --> 1:23:54.160 assumption that it cannot happen would be incorrect from a 1:23:54.200 --> 1:23:57.840 scientific set. That's what I find myself explaining when people 1:23:57.960 --> 1:24:03.439 ask me about it, is I'm like, no known, no, no, no, 1:24:04.920 --> 1:24:08.040 So take whatever solace you like you want from that. 1:24:08.479 --> 1:24:12.519 But it's just a lot of unknown man. So there's 1:24:12.560 --> 1:24:15.560 a few things we can look to. What is a 1:24:15.640 --> 1:24:20.559 place called the World Health Organization w h O. Their 1:24:20.640 --> 1:24:26.519 recommendations are pretty firm that animal material known to be 1:24:26.720 --> 1:24:30.000 positive for a c w or for any t SC 1:24:30.720 --> 1:24:34.679 should not be consumed by any other man animal, including humans. 1:24:35.880 --> 1:24:38.519 World Health Organization says keep it out of the food. 1:24:38.760 --> 1:24:41.240 What does the Centers for Disease Control say? The Centers 1:24:41.280 --> 1:24:44.040 for Disease Control is very, very similar. They have a 1:24:44.160 --> 1:24:47.839 presence on their website, you know, dealing with chronic wasting disease. 1:24:48.479 --> 1:24:51.920 Their recommendations are things like, you know, if you hunt 1:24:52.240 --> 1:24:55.479 in an area where c w D is known to exist, 1:24:56.120 --> 1:24:59.880 you should consider getting your dear tested. And if you 1:25:00.160 --> 1:25:02.720 follow that, if you get your dear tested and it 1:25:02.800 --> 1:25:06.160 comes back positive, the recommendation is that you not consume 1:25:06.240 --> 1:25:09.640 that material. So here you have, you know, both the 1:25:09.800 --> 1:25:13.479 World Health Organization and our national Centers for Disease Control 1:25:13.920 --> 1:25:19.160 making pretty solid recommendations saying, yeah, you probably shouldn't need 1:25:19.200 --> 1:25:23.800 that stuff. So that's from that's from health professionals. Um. 1:25:23.920 --> 1:25:29.040 The Wisconsin Department of Health has a little corner in 1:25:29.240 --> 1:25:32.120 the UH in the rules digest. Every state has their 1:25:32.160 --> 1:25:36.960 hunting rules digest or you know hunting regulations digest. Uh. 1:25:37.000 --> 1:25:40.200 There's a little presence from the from the Department of 1:25:40.280 --> 1:25:43.080 Health in there, and they recommend that you should have 1:25:43.200 --> 1:25:45.840 your dear tested and if it comes back positive, that 1:25:45.960 --> 1:25:50.840 you're not consuming. Yeah, but man, I mean the implications 1:25:50.920 --> 1:25:53.280 of it, though, is as you get into these areas 1:25:53.320 --> 1:25:55.719 like this guy heard from the on their family property, 1:25:56.000 --> 1:26:00.200 four or five. As I said earlier, four of the 1:26:00.240 --> 1:26:04.599 five deer they killed on their property had it. If 1:26:04.640 --> 1:26:07.439 you're going to follow his recommendations at a point soon 1:26:07.800 --> 1:26:10.200 in a lot of areas around the country, it won't 1:26:10.280 --> 1:26:13.640 warrant the chase. There will be no there would be 1:26:13.720 --> 1:26:15.920 no reason to hunt. Hear, you're gonna shoot five deer 1:26:16.080 --> 1:26:18.320 to get one that you can consume if you're doing 1:26:18.360 --> 1:26:21.400 the test, if you're following the guidelines. Now I've told 1:26:21.439 --> 1:26:26.800 this story before, but I had mine tested from here. 1:26:27.040 --> 1:26:30.639 From here, Yeah, we had them all tested and took 1:26:30.720 --> 1:26:32.479 him home. Now, Initially I was like, I'm not even 1:26:32.680 --> 1:26:35.479 get a tested because I don't want to write. I'd 1:26:35.600 --> 1:26:39.760 rather just live in peace. The landowner insisted, Yeah, I'd 1:26:39.840 --> 1:26:42.400 rather know. Come on, I'd rather live. I'd rather live 1:26:42.400 --> 1:26:46.400 in ignorance. Right, just the peace, peaceful ignorance. But then 1:26:46.479 --> 1:26:49.799 I got to think of to myself, if my wife 1:26:50.439 --> 1:26:54.720 gets wind of the fact that there's a test one 1:26:54.800 --> 1:27:00.240 could get for free on a deer and did do 1:27:00.400 --> 1:27:03.160 it and opted to instead take said dear home and 1:27:03.320 --> 1:27:08.400 feed them to thy children, And then later you had 1:27:08.479 --> 1:27:10.439 to say like, oh, yeah, I could have had a 1:27:10.560 --> 1:27:14.719 test done but didn't instead just fed it to the kids. 1:27:17.160 --> 1:27:20.360 You know, you can picture all that's going. So what 1:27:20.439 --> 1:27:22.240 I did that was just like took the deer home, 1:27:22.479 --> 1:27:26.400 keptain my freezer, awaiting my results, got my results proceeded either, 1:27:26.640 --> 1:27:31.519 which were very quick by the way here in yeah, 1:27:31.640 --> 1:27:34.840 so that absolutely I don't want to go so far 1:27:34.880 --> 1:27:38.040 as to say you're stupid to not do that. Now, 1:27:38.280 --> 1:27:42.400 the rub is if it had come back positive, would 1:27:42.439 --> 1:27:45.240 I really have gone and taken those two deer and 1:27:45.520 --> 1:27:49.800 thrown them in the garbage? That is painful, and that 1:27:50.080 --> 1:27:53.880 is a you know, a very personal decision. It's based 1:27:53.960 --> 1:27:59.360 on what you know and your individual tolerance for risk. 1:28:00.600 --> 1:28:02.680 And that's what that's what I like to that's what 1:28:02.800 --> 1:28:08.080 I like to talk to people about. Is the chances 1:28:08.120 --> 1:28:12.920 are low, they're not zero. Is this a risk that 1:28:13.040 --> 1:28:18.439 you're willing to endure for yourself, for your family, for 1:28:18.640 --> 1:28:21.240 your children. Are you comfortable saying what you would do personally? 1:28:21.880 --> 1:28:24.280 I don't think it's really your main because I think 1:28:24.360 --> 1:28:32.320 my role is to information that I've studied this stuff 1:28:32.320 --> 1:28:36.000 for a long time, um, you know, to date, and 1:28:36.080 --> 1:28:38.960 I get my dear tested too because I want more 1:28:39.000 --> 1:28:41.400 c w D is it's not as thick, it's not 1:28:41.520 --> 1:28:45.360 as prevalent where I hunt yet as it is here 1:28:45.520 --> 1:28:47.840 or just to hair south of here, and I haven't 1:28:47.920 --> 1:28:50.560 hit a positive yet, let's put it that way. But 1:28:50.680 --> 1:28:53.600 you but you do, you do think obviously testing is 1:28:53.600 --> 1:28:56.160 a good idea if nothing else. I mean, it provide 1:28:56.160 --> 1:28:59.960 it provides data to people, provides data back to per science, 1:29:00.080 --> 1:29:02.519 just to try and track what's going on with this disease. 1:29:03.320 --> 1:29:06.360 You know, you're kind of boiling in now you're boiling 1:29:06.400 --> 1:29:08.840 into that kind of that big question, and it's why 1:29:08.920 --> 1:29:12.320 should people care about c w D? Okay, why care? 1:29:12.560 --> 1:29:16.280 Because it's been around a long time. Even where prevalence 1:29:16.400 --> 1:29:19.479 is high, there's still dear, maybe not as many, you know, 1:29:19.600 --> 1:29:23.000 maybe in these localized areas we see population level effects, 1:29:23.080 --> 1:29:26.400 but you know that's what I typically here. It's been 1:29:26.439 --> 1:29:28.880 here a long time. Cows don't get it, people don't 1:29:28.920 --> 1:29:30.599 get it, and there's plenty of dere to hunt. Why 1:29:30.640 --> 1:29:34.120 should I care about c w D Because it's a corruption. 1:29:34.880 --> 1:29:38.160 It's a potential corruption of a pristine food source. Yeah, 1:29:38.240 --> 1:29:40.519 it's not a it's not a normal part of the system. 1:29:40.600 --> 1:29:43.240 But anyway, I think we can boil this down and 1:29:43.479 --> 1:29:46.080 and and a paper came out a year ago written 1:29:46.160 --> 1:29:49.599 by a couple of people that I highly respect, John 1:29:49.680 --> 1:29:54.639 Fisher from the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study in in Athens, Georgia, 1:29:55.160 --> 1:29:58.240 and Mike Miller from the from the state of Colorado. 1:29:58.920 --> 1:30:02.120 And Mike has been publishing about c w D for 1:30:02.920 --> 1:30:05.200 you know, ever since I think the late seventies or 1:30:05.240 --> 1:30:08.040 early nineteen eighties. He knows as much about this disease 1:30:08.120 --> 1:30:11.600 as any other person does. Anyway, these guys wrote a 1:30:11.680 --> 1:30:15.519 paper and they give they've given some presentations to you know, 1:30:15.720 --> 1:30:18.679 to state audiences over the course of the last year, 1:30:19.680 --> 1:30:22.840 and they articulate why we why we should probably care 1:30:22.880 --> 1:30:26.679 about CWD and boil it down to some very simple things. 1:30:26.840 --> 1:30:31.800 One is that chance that CWD could cross over the 1:30:31.880 --> 1:30:35.559 species barrier and become a human disease. Issue. So that's 1:30:35.560 --> 1:30:38.439 a reason. One reason why we should be concerned about CWD, 1:30:38.600 --> 1:30:41.120 the chance that it could become a human health issue. 1:30:41.840 --> 1:30:44.760 Number two is that you know, we have, as I mentioned, 1:30:44.840 --> 1:30:50.639 we've now documented in a localized area population impacts coming 1:30:50.760 --> 1:30:53.960 from c w D, and at this point in time, 1:30:54.040 --> 1:30:57.160 we don't know. Time will tell whether those population impacts 1:30:57.240 --> 1:31:01.320 will become more regional, whether they'll bread from the localized 1:31:01.360 --> 1:31:03.880 area to the regional. So there's that chance that c 1:31:04.160 --> 1:31:08.839 w D could become a population impacting, population limiting factor. 1:31:09.240 --> 1:31:12.040 That's another reason we should care. Those are the two 1:31:12.200 --> 1:31:14.479 big ones that they that they point out in their paper. 1:31:14.760 --> 1:31:17.200 But now there's a third one that when these guys 1:31:17.240 --> 1:31:19.479 are out talking to audiences, and this is one that's 1:31:19.520 --> 1:31:22.479 come up as well. It's a highly technical term we 1:31:22.600 --> 1:31:26.040 call we referred to as the ick factor. You were 1:31:26.080 --> 1:31:30.080 talking about it before the early Human dimensions research where 1:31:30.080 --> 1:31:32.600 they sent surveys out to hunters and their families. They 1:31:32.640 --> 1:31:34.360 did a lot of that in the state of Wisconsin 1:31:34.439 --> 1:31:37.240 back in two thousand to two thousand three, two thousand four, 1:31:38.040 --> 1:31:41.519 and they reached you know, they asked hunters, at what 1:31:41.840 --> 1:31:46.840 point would you have had enough and decide not to 1:31:46.920 --> 1:31:50.000 go hunting there, And it seems like when you get 1:31:50.080 --> 1:31:53.920 up in that forty to fifty percent prevalence range where 1:31:54.080 --> 1:31:56.760 not too south to here, too far south here where 1:31:56.800 --> 1:31:59.040 you kill that three year old buck and flip a coin, 1:31:59.479 --> 1:32:03.040 we're in at range that at that point, when prevalence 1:32:03.080 --> 1:32:07.280 gets to that point, that ick factor might change your 1:32:07.360 --> 1:32:10.439 behavior and either you will decide not to hunt there, 1:32:10.760 --> 1:32:13.840 or perhaps your spouse will decide for you that you're 1:32:13.920 --> 1:32:17.439 not going to hunt there. So now put yourself in 1:32:17.560 --> 1:32:21.519 the in the shoes of a landowner who's trying to 1:32:21.720 --> 1:32:24.600 manage deer, keep deer numbers down so he might have 1:32:24.760 --> 1:32:29.120 some oaks regenerate someday. How do you manage dear without 1:32:29.200 --> 1:32:32.920 deer hunters? So, even when we get CWD prevalence up 1:32:32.960 --> 1:32:36.719 in that fifty percent range in adult males, it's probably 1:32:36.760 --> 1:32:40.559 going to be some time before disease starts limiting deer 1:32:40.680 --> 1:32:43.519 numbers themselves. So we're gonna have that intervening timeframe where 1:32:43.560 --> 1:32:46.600 deer numbers are gonna skyrock. But I'll add to that, like, 1:32:46.720 --> 1:32:48.880 how do you manage deer without deer hunters? How do 1:32:48.920 --> 1:32:51.320 you manage a host of fish and wildlife species without 1:32:51.400 --> 1:32:55.200 deer without revenue generator from license sales, from license sales, 1:32:55.280 --> 1:32:57.840 so it's like it's a it becomes a like no 1:32:58.120 --> 1:33:01.600 hunt like when you have a radical decline and hunter participation, 1:33:02.080 --> 1:33:04.360 it does not bolde well for any kind of wildlife 1:33:04.400 --> 1:33:07.360 that's managed about to state right, A lot of problems 1:33:07.400 --> 1:33:11.920 for access research the very Yeah, the very information were 1:33:12.040 --> 1:33:15.320 the acquisition of the very information we're talking about right now. Yea. 1:33:15.520 --> 1:33:18.840 So so people ask me why should I care? And 1:33:18.920 --> 1:33:21.759 those are the things that I've been keying on for probably, 1:33:22.000 --> 1:33:24.439 you know, close to ten years. Quick recap would be 1:33:25.040 --> 1:33:29.080 the potential impact on dear populations themselves. When prevalence gets 1:33:29.160 --> 1:33:33.680 high enough kills deer and you start seeing localized or 1:33:33.760 --> 1:33:37.400 regional population declines due to c w D due to disease. 1:33:37.479 --> 1:33:41.080 Nobody wants to see that. Number two, the possibility that 1:33:41.200 --> 1:33:44.040 c w D could cross over the species barrier and 1:33:44.160 --> 1:33:47.920 become a human health or maybe even a livestock health issue, okay. 1:33:48.760 --> 1:33:52.799 And number three is that ick factor that when prevalence 1:33:52.880 --> 1:33:56.559 gets high enough, hunters will change their behavior, quit hunting 1:33:57.000 --> 1:34:00.479 or go hunting someplace else, and all the rep cuestions 1:34:00.520 --> 1:34:03.040 that that has on our ability to manage gear and 1:34:03.080 --> 1:34:05.760 as you so, I definitely pointed out our ability to 1:34:05.840 --> 1:34:10.800 manage other things. Is deer hunting licenses pay for it all. Now, 1:34:11.600 --> 1:34:15.679 I know you've been itching, You've been scratching to get 1:34:15.760 --> 1:34:18.720 fascinated by the whole because you've been wanted, Because I 1:34:18.840 --> 1:34:24.080 know that you want you you're concerned about controlling the spread, 1:34:27.320 --> 1:34:32.120 No one, because I I think of that as the like, Yeah, 1:34:32.160 --> 1:34:34.960 you probably haven't noticed, but I I feel like I've 1:34:35.000 --> 1:34:38.920 tried to take us from the past into the present, 1:34:39.640 --> 1:34:44.040 and now we're moving into the future. I did notice that. 1:34:44.160 --> 1:34:49.000 That's very good. Yeah. Um, and and Brian's actually answered 1:34:49.000 --> 1:34:51.040 a lot of what I was the questions that I 1:34:51.120 --> 1:34:52.840 had that I wanted to start spurting out right at 1:34:52.880 --> 1:34:58.280 the beginning. Um, can I speak for you for a minute? Always? 1:34:59.040 --> 1:35:01.080 Is that that that that that bother you? No, not 1:35:01.160 --> 1:35:07.120 at all. You worry a doug during worries a lot 1:35:08.920 --> 1:35:13.479 about c w D because you're on sort of the 1:35:13.960 --> 1:35:17.080 you're on like the threshold. Yeah, we're right there. As 1:35:17.240 --> 1:35:19.320 as Brian said, it's just to the south of us. 1:35:19.400 --> 1:35:23.400 I'm guessing that we have dear in our immediate area 1:35:23.479 --> 1:35:26.720 that have the disease. Um into DAT and none off 1:35:26.760 --> 1:35:29.240 this farm to DAT None office farm. And we've tested 1:35:29.840 --> 1:35:34.200 every year for the last two or three years. And 1:35:34.280 --> 1:35:37.479 where I hunt in Crawford County, Um, we saw it 1:35:37.640 --> 1:35:41.559 coming Crawford being just west of Richland County where we are, 1:35:42.720 --> 1:35:47.120 UM from the tree stand I sit in. Two years ago, 1:35:47.280 --> 1:35:50.160 the first positive in Crawford County was killed in a 1:35:50.320 --> 1:35:53.000 I think it was a four year old buck about 1:35:53.320 --> 1:35:56.840 three miles to the northeast of where I'm sitting in 1:35:56.920 --> 1:36:02.439 a tree. Last year another one was picked up in 1:36:02.600 --> 1:36:06.559 the section just to the southwest of where I'm sitting 1:36:06.640 --> 1:36:09.720 in that in that in that tree stands, So I'm 1:36:09.760 --> 1:36:13.280 watching it as well. First you know, you see it coming, 1:36:14.040 --> 1:36:17.439 and then it's just off to this side. Now it's 1:36:17.479 --> 1:36:19.640 on the other corner as well, and it doesn't end 1:36:19.760 --> 1:36:22.879 into you start looking at a mature deer a little differently. 1:36:23.400 --> 1:36:26.680 You can go onto the Wisconsin d in our website 1:36:26.720 --> 1:36:30.880 and UH in the c w D section, and of course, 1:36:31.439 --> 1:36:33.479 as you're saying, the statistics are a little bit different 1:36:33.520 --> 1:36:37.559 now because testing isn't as widespread. But you can take 1:36:37.720 --> 1:36:41.479 a year to year over the last several years, the 1:36:42.439 --> 1:36:48.439 photographs or these or the results of southwest Wisconsin and 1:36:48.479 --> 1:36:51.680 it shows every section and it started in the what 1:36:51.800 --> 1:36:54.479 they called the hot zone. And if you you kind 1:36:54.479 --> 1:36:57.280 of flipped through those very quickly, you just see that boop. 1:36:57.439 --> 1:37:00.120 It just keeps widening. And it starts out there, Oh, 1:37:00.160 --> 1:37:03.160 there's a little pink squares here, and then there gets 1:37:03.200 --> 1:37:05.320 to be more of them, and then numbers keep getting bigger, 1:37:05.360 --> 1:37:08.160 and it just keeps, you know, spreading in that way. Um. 1:37:08.360 --> 1:37:10.800 I was freaked out about enough earlier. But now that 1:37:10.840 --> 1:37:12.680 I've talked with you about it, the part that I 1:37:12.760 --> 1:37:17.880 didn't that it wasn't registering with me was Stephen, I've 1:37:17.920 --> 1:37:20.920 talked a lot about, you know, management and why why 1:37:20.920 --> 1:37:23.679 I'm concerned about it. I like hunting deer, like having 1:37:23.840 --> 1:37:28.120 enough uh deer hunt. I like eating venison. Um, it's 1:37:28.479 --> 1:37:30.800 there's the economic impact in the area and all these 1:37:30.840 --> 1:37:33.280 wonderful things that are a part of it. And and 1:37:34.000 --> 1:37:36.520 I guess I told you before we started the podcasts 1:37:36.560 --> 1:37:40.640 that one of our management objectives here is to regenerate 1:37:40.920 --> 1:37:43.599 red oak up in a chunk of woods that we're 1:37:43.640 --> 1:37:46.559 cutting my great grandfather's trees, hunting twenty five year old trees. 1:37:47.479 --> 1:37:49.920 And uh, We've put a lot of effort into a 1:37:49.960 --> 1:37:54.360 shelter would harvest up there, and now you know there's 1:37:54.400 --> 1:37:56.680 been a decline in hunters already certainly hadn't been a 1:37:56.800 --> 1:37:59.599 decline in hunters on this place, but some in the area. 1:37:59.640 --> 1:38:02.960 But the then mall factor in that ick factor where 1:38:03.080 --> 1:38:07.880 people fewer people are are are hunting, and well you're 1:38:07.920 --> 1:38:10.760 gonna start dying off, but not until a chew down 1:38:10.800 --> 1:38:12.400 every yoak I've got up there, and that would I mean, 1:38:12.439 --> 1:38:15.840 there's just there's a whole another uh concern that I 1:38:16.000 --> 1:38:21.280 have to Um. I mean, I was, you're gonna have 1:38:21.479 --> 1:38:23.160 if it kills all the do you have more oaks 1:38:23.200 --> 1:38:24.640 you know what to do with? Yeah, but it's not 1:38:24.720 --> 1:38:26.800 gonna as Brian was saying, it's not gonna Well, it's 1:38:26.840 --> 1:38:28.719 not gonna kill all the would be a nice problem 1:38:28.760 --> 1:38:33.120 to have. Yeah, well yeah, sure, it would be too 1:38:33.120 --> 1:38:34.680 many oak trees to be a nice problem they have. 1:38:34.800 --> 1:38:37.559 But um, and so I was feeling like, as I said, 1:38:37.560 --> 1:38:40.160 I'm on the County Deer Advisory Committee, and one of 1:38:40.200 --> 1:38:42.320 the statements that I made during our meetings was, I 1:38:42.400 --> 1:38:46.320 feel like we have an obligation in Richeal County, especially uh, 1:38:47.600 --> 1:38:49.400 you know here a little further north, And I talked 1:38:49.439 --> 1:38:51.599 with folks around here about this that you know, we're 1:38:51.640 --> 1:38:53.000 on the edge of it now, on the edge of 1:38:53.040 --> 1:38:56.760 the spread. We have an obligation to I feel we 1:38:56.840 --> 1:38:59.880 have an obligation at least to do what we can 1:38:59.920 --> 1:39:02.280 to slow the spread of it down. And how do 1:39:02.360 --> 1:39:06.280 you do that? Well, there have been these conflicting and 1:39:06.320 --> 1:39:08.360 it was actually something I wanted to ask you about. 1:39:08.520 --> 1:39:11.639 One is population control, but then the other one's demographic control, 1:39:11.720 --> 1:39:14.760 because the uh, the younger bucks are the ones who 1:39:14.800 --> 1:39:18.439 are more apt to spread it. Um, at least that's 1:39:18.479 --> 1:39:24.360 what I'm reading like in Samuel's research. Um, So, I 1:39:24.400 --> 1:39:26.560 guess I don't have any I don't have. I'm not 1:39:26.840 --> 1:39:28.519 leading up to a question so much as I'm just 1:39:28.600 --> 1:39:34.439 making is there a reason to believe that lowering a 1:39:34.520 --> 1:39:41.519 deer population by some factor whatever slow as the spread? 1:39:42.960 --> 1:39:47.120 Is that just an assumption? We're making some assumptions there. Um, 1:39:47.560 --> 1:39:49.400 I can try and address that a little bit. So 1:39:49.960 --> 1:39:56.160 if we have a population that has prevalence, and we 1:39:56.439 --> 1:39:59.880 may wave a magic want and we make half a 1:40:00.040 --> 1:40:07.400 those deer disappear today, what's the prevalence in the remaining population? Right? 1:40:07.520 --> 1:40:12.519 Because we're not selectively taking. That's why one of the 1:40:12.600 --> 1:40:15.479 reasons it's so challenging to try and manage c w D. 1:40:16.080 --> 1:40:19.920 We don't have good vaccines, we don't have any therapeutics 1:40:20.320 --> 1:40:23.040 that you could, you know, give a dearer dose of penicillin, 1:40:23.120 --> 1:40:27.840 it would make CWD go away. And they don't stand 1:40:27.880 --> 1:40:30.439 out when you look at a deer standing in the 1:40:30.520 --> 1:40:33.720 pasture or in the woods unless it's at that very 1:40:33.880 --> 1:40:38.000 late state of disease where it's obviously positive. We have 1:40:38.120 --> 1:40:41.160 no idea whether it's whether it's CWD positive or negative. 1:40:41.439 --> 1:40:44.360 So when you shoot a deer, you don't know. So 1:40:44.840 --> 1:40:46.840 that's why this disease is. One of the reasons it's 1:40:46.880 --> 1:40:52.719 so challenging is because we don't have affective management tools. Okay, 1:40:52.840 --> 1:40:56.120 so you would say say there, well, then why lower 1:40:56.160 --> 1:40:58.880 deer population? Right, doesn't make any sense because we're not 1:40:59.040 --> 1:41:02.880 impacting prev bents or the proportion of animals positive. But 1:41:02.960 --> 1:41:05.960 I think it's very important to lower to keep those 1:41:06.000 --> 1:41:09.400 dear populations low. Number one is for oaks. Well, I'm 1:41:09.439 --> 1:41:11.400 not sure number one is oaks, but oaks are in 1:41:11.439 --> 1:41:16.479 the equation. Oaks are definitely like equation um, you know, 1:41:16.640 --> 1:41:20.400 agricultural crop depredation is another. Uh, the number of deer 1:41:20.479 --> 1:41:23.800 vehicle collisions is another, and disease is another as well. 1:41:24.520 --> 1:41:27.080 So let's take that population that we waived our magic 1:41:27.160 --> 1:41:29.400 wand and we made half of them go away, we 1:41:29.520 --> 1:41:32.720 still have ten percent prevalence. But the key to me 1:41:33.000 --> 1:41:35.960 is we only have half as many positives as we 1:41:36.160 --> 1:41:40.600 had before we waived our magic wand with half of 1:41:40.680 --> 1:41:45.200 those positives, we have less animals actively shedding infectious agents 1:41:45.240 --> 1:41:47.680 out into the environment where it's going to persist for 1:41:47.960 --> 1:41:52.400 years to decades. We have fewer animals which are able 1:41:52.479 --> 1:41:57.760 to actively transmit disease to other deer. And the thing 1:41:57.840 --> 1:42:02.240 you keep on before was that spursal. Okay, if we 1:42:02.400 --> 1:42:06.080 have fewer CWD positive deer out there on the landscape, 1:42:06.360 --> 1:42:09.080 we have fewer animals that might decide to pick up 1:42:09.160 --> 1:42:12.000 and move their home ten or twenty miles down the road, 1:42:12.200 --> 1:42:15.360 moving disease with them. So that to me is the 1:42:15.560 --> 1:42:19.920 argument while lower dear populations, lowering dear populations is good 1:42:20.960 --> 1:42:24.560 if theoretically, if we took dear populations down to some 1:42:24.960 --> 1:42:28.640 very very astoundingly low level, we may be able to 1:42:28.880 --> 1:42:32.519 break or interrupt the disease transmission cycle. And then we 1:42:32.600 --> 1:42:36.320 would actually reduce prevalence. But that's taking deer down to 1:42:37.040 --> 1:42:40.679 you know, scarce, you know, five deer per square mile 1:42:40.920 --> 1:42:42.920 not probably not going to do it. We'd have to 1:42:42.960 --> 1:42:46.960 take deer down to where interaction. We'd have to take 1:42:47.040 --> 1:42:50.479 it down to areas where deer would be rare in 1:42:50.680 --> 1:42:54.599 order to interrupt the transmission cycle. But like I said, 1:42:54.840 --> 1:42:58.879 those very positive benefits of taking dear populations low. Lowering 1:42:59.120 --> 1:43:03.080 the absolute number of CW positive deer on the landscape 1:43:03.320 --> 1:43:07.519 has very definite benefits. Um when in this part of 1:43:07.560 --> 1:43:10.320 the world we assume we know as dear biologists and 1:43:10.439 --> 1:43:13.920 landowners who have dear um hunters who spend a lot 1:43:14.000 --> 1:43:15.679 of time with deer, we know quite a bit about 1:43:15.760 --> 1:43:20.560 dear behavior. So who is the most likely candidate to 1:43:20.760 --> 1:43:23.639 disperse to take a ten or twenty mile or even 1:43:23.720 --> 1:43:27.920 up to a hundred mile hike. Young males when at 1:43:27.960 --> 1:43:31.479 what time? How old are they one year old, twelve months? 1:43:31.680 --> 1:43:34.040 When mama gives them the boot, you know they've hung 1:43:34.120 --> 1:43:36.439 around with mom pretty much their first year of life. 1:43:36.840 --> 1:43:39.479 When that dough gives them a boot, before you know, 1:43:39.600 --> 1:43:42.639 she has her next set of fawns, um she'll she'll 1:43:42.720 --> 1:43:45.320 give those um those year links twelve months of old 1:43:45.400 --> 1:43:51.240 animals of boot we'll start kicking out literally and a 1:43:51.439 --> 1:43:54.920 and a female fawn or female yearling will likely set 1:43:55.000 --> 1:43:58.799 up her home range adjacent to where mom is. Okay, 1:43:58.960 --> 1:44:01.639 more often than not, you'll find her place pretty close 1:44:01.720 --> 1:44:05.479 to mom, keeping that family group together. The young male, 1:44:05.800 --> 1:44:08.040 on the other hand, he needs to go out and 1:44:08.160 --> 1:44:11.680 find a place and so that might be close by, 1:44:12.200 --> 1:44:15.040 it might be quite a ways away. Like any of 1:44:15.080 --> 1:44:19.800 these stories you hear, were some animal turns up three 1:44:19.920 --> 1:44:23.120 states over right, it's a it's a it's a young guy. 1:44:23.160 --> 1:44:26.840 It's a young man, a Latin line that comes from 1:44:26.880 --> 1:44:29.600 South Dakota and shows up in Wisconsin. Yeah, with a 1:44:29.720 --> 1:44:33.120 radio color or like elk it turns up Missouri. Or 1:44:33.160 --> 1:44:35.320 wolf out of the up that gets shot outside of 1:44:35.360 --> 1:44:38.360 guy's chicken Cooper, Missouri. Now those can do it too. 1:44:38.920 --> 1:44:43.080 But when you think of the predominant animal that disperses 1:44:43.240 --> 1:44:46.599 as that twelve month old male. So if that twelve 1:44:46.640 --> 1:44:50.080 month old male has c w D and decides to 1:44:50.160 --> 1:44:52.920 go ten or twenty miles or thirty miles before it 1:44:53.000 --> 1:44:56.000 finds its new home, that could be you know, the 1:44:56.080 --> 1:44:59.960 animal that moves disease. So yeah, I don't think we were. 1:45:00.080 --> 1:45:02.519 We didn't quite get into it. But we think about 1:45:02.640 --> 1:45:06.960 how disease moves, how CWD moves, and we have that 1:45:07.120 --> 1:45:11.880 clearly at that dear to dear slow diffusion, diffusive type 1:45:11.960 --> 1:45:14.599 movement with an odd deer that picks up and goes 1:45:14.640 --> 1:45:18.519 a long way. Case in pointed in the state of Wyoming, 1:45:18.560 --> 1:45:20.640 they had a mule deer I think it was a 1:45:20.880 --> 1:45:24.680 dough that was CWD positive, had a radio collar. She 1:45:24.840 --> 1:45:27.400 went over a little over a hundred miles as the 1:45:27.479 --> 1:45:30.240 crow flies. Yeah, they lost her and then found her 1:45:30.240 --> 1:45:33.360 again with the UM with UM with a fixed wing 1:45:33.439 --> 1:45:36.280 aircraft with a with an antenna on it. And she 1:45:36.439 --> 1:45:39.400 had moved c w D herself and c w D 1:45:39.520 --> 1:45:42.920 infectious agent over a hundred miles as the crow flies. 1:45:43.120 --> 1:45:47.720 Now how far did she actually go? Okay, so we 1:45:47.880 --> 1:45:50.720 think of that slow to do they have like what 1:45:51.320 --> 1:45:56.519 just that was her personality type? She's no explanation for it. No, 1:45:56.800 --> 1:45:59.800 no explanation I'm aware with of you know why she 1:46:00.040 --> 1:46:02.960 did that, but she did and periodically Yale, you'll have 1:46:03.120 --> 1:46:06.640 animals in they had a dough here um in the 1:46:06.720 --> 1:46:08.760 early years of c w D when they were doing 1:46:08.840 --> 1:46:11.920 a collar and follower study, capturing the animals, putting telemetry 1:46:12.000 --> 1:46:14.840 collars on them and following. Had one that went from 1:46:14.920 --> 1:46:18.360 outside of Mount Horror just outside of Rockford and then 1:46:18.439 --> 1:46:20.719 she turned her on and came back. Apparently she didn't 1:46:20.720 --> 1:46:26.120 like Rockford, so but h so, anyway, that's the that 1:46:26.520 --> 1:46:29.679 first mechanism is that dear to dear to deer. Then 1:46:29.760 --> 1:46:32.320 the other one, the big one that we had can 1:46:32.479 --> 1:46:34.519 have something to do with. We might not be able 1:46:34.560 --> 1:46:36.439 to do a lot about dear to deer other than 1:46:36.600 --> 1:46:39.760 lowering populations trying to kill c w D positive deer. 1:46:40.320 --> 1:46:44.839 But the other broad category is human assisted movement. Okay, 1:46:45.520 --> 1:46:48.200 that's a big that we haven't really touched on, and 1:46:48.280 --> 1:46:53.200 there's multiple possibilities there. One is gonna be the deer farms, okay, 1:46:53.280 --> 1:46:57.839 the captive servid industry. That industry is built on movement 1:46:57.960 --> 1:47:00.519 of animals, moving them from place A to place B. 1:47:01.240 --> 1:47:04.960 In the United States, there've been over eighty game farms 1:47:05.400 --> 1:47:09.559 that have been detected CWD positive. Okay. In Canada there's 1:47:09.640 --> 1:47:13.439 been just under a hundred elk farms now that where 1:47:13.520 --> 1:47:19.040 CWD has been detected. So is this a risk factor? Absolutely? Oh, 1:47:19.080 --> 1:47:25.280 there are some there are some mainstream wildlife groups who 1:47:25.320 --> 1:47:29.120 have proposed a band and I'm not talking like like 1:47:29.640 --> 1:47:33.360 radical and virals, but i mean like hunter based wildlife 1:47:33.400 --> 1:47:36.680 groups that proposed the idea that we should ban interstate 1:47:36.760 --> 1:47:41.840 deer traffic or interstate deer traffic right. And some states, 1:47:41.960 --> 1:47:46.040 some states have actually uh, some states have never had 1:47:46.120 --> 1:47:49.280 a captive serving industry lawful. Uh. There's been a few 1:47:49.400 --> 1:47:54.360 states that have through citizen initiatives lad to legislative action 1:47:54.960 --> 1:47:58.640 to get rid of the industry. There is oversight um 1:47:58.720 --> 1:48:02.640 to a degree, there's over site on interstate movement of animals. 1:48:03.120 --> 1:48:07.960 But this is one risk factor now and we bring 1:48:08.040 --> 1:48:11.160 it home to Wisconsin. Here, we've got um, We've got 1:48:11.360 --> 1:48:16.600 three game farm shooter facilities or you know, whatever you 1:48:16.640 --> 1:48:18.920 want to call them, whatever you want to call them, 1:48:20.520 --> 1:48:23.360 fenced operation. There's a lot of them in Wisconsin anyway. 1:48:23.400 --> 1:48:25.679 There's three of them in the in the northern part 1:48:25.720 --> 1:48:30.320 of the state of Wisconsin where cw D has been detected. 1:48:31.120 --> 1:48:36.839 And the typical, the historical, the the response from management community, 1:48:36.960 --> 1:48:41.880 the agriculture or natural resources is to depopulate that facility 1:48:41.960 --> 1:48:45.559 to stamp out disease kill all the animals in it, right, 1:48:46.280 --> 1:48:49.560 So we now have three in the northern part of 1:48:49.600 --> 1:48:54.559 the state where they have not been depopulated. There are 1:48:55.040 --> 1:48:57.799 you know, these facilities are allowed to stay in business 1:48:58.439 --> 1:49:03.479 um restock animals, so multiple CWD positives. These facilities are 1:49:04.120 --> 1:49:07.920 in deer country, so we have wild deer on the 1:49:08.000 --> 1:49:11.639 other side of the fence. So some dude can pretend, 1:49:11.880 --> 1:49:18.080 can pay to pretend to go hunting. That's it. So 1:49:19.040 --> 1:49:22.280 he like some guy that can't stomach the idea that 1:49:22.320 --> 1:49:24.880 you'd have to go out and try and maybe cope 1:49:24.960 --> 1:49:28.200 with failure. Would be like, I could just pay some 1:49:28.320 --> 1:49:32.479 money and be guaranteed success because what I'm interested in, hey, 1:49:32.560 --> 1:49:35.880 by the inch, is getting what I paid for, getting 1:49:35.920 --> 1:49:42.800 what I came for. SAE. That's probably true. I probably 1:49:42.840 --> 1:49:49.040 shouldn't comment on that, but these are the These very 1:49:49.200 --> 1:49:55.519 definitely pose a transmission risk and epidemiological risk to free 1:49:55.600 --> 1:49:59.080 ranging deer on the other side of the fence. And 1:49:59.320 --> 1:50:01.600 so these are when I talk to people in the 1:50:01.720 --> 1:50:04.400 northern part of the state, they said, well, what are 1:50:04.439 --> 1:50:06.920 the risks. Well, the risks are you know, things we 1:50:07.040 --> 1:50:09.360 talked about dear to deer to deer movement and then 1:50:09.800 --> 1:50:15.040 anthropogenic are human assisted movement. One of those is the 1:50:15.200 --> 1:50:19.240 captive deer industry and the existence of these positive facilities 1:50:19.240 --> 1:50:21.840 where if a fence goes down or there's nose to 1:50:21.920 --> 1:50:24.960 nose contact through the fence, that disease could leak out 1:50:25.000 --> 1:50:28.240 of that facility. But another one we haven't talked about, 1:50:29.479 --> 1:50:32.679 movement of movement, movement of carcasses. Oh well, then there's 1:50:32.720 --> 1:50:34.720 the third that I wanted to ask about, because there's 1:50:34.720 --> 1:50:36.000 some of these facilities and you can go out and 1:50:36.000 --> 1:50:39.439 watch the YouTube videos at these facilities and they're put 1:50:39.560 --> 1:50:43.840 on by the captive captive servant industry about how here's 1:50:43.840 --> 1:50:46.240 how we do our deer. And they run them through 1:50:46.320 --> 1:50:49.240 just like a run cattle through a shoot, and they're 1:50:49.280 --> 1:50:54.640 taking urine, and they're taking uh, you know, any kind 1:50:54.680 --> 1:50:59.000 of glace for for deer attractive. And now they're selling 1:50:59.040 --> 1:51:02.840 that stuff in a bottle. And I mean, you go 1:51:02.920 --> 1:51:05.439 into any sporting goods store and you see this stuff, 1:51:06.720 --> 1:51:08.560 are there any restricts? Well, I guess you would know 1:51:08.640 --> 1:51:10.640 that necessarily or or may don't want to comment, But 1:51:11.280 --> 1:51:13.439 I started thinking about that. So now I'd go into 1:51:13.520 --> 1:51:16.080 the you know, Bob sporting goods store or whatever, and 1:51:16.160 --> 1:51:20.519 by a bottle of do urine in astrius and take 1:51:20.600 --> 1:51:23.080 that out and you know, spray it around and possibly 1:51:23.160 --> 1:51:27.200 spread am I that's not risk. Isn't a risk? Yes, 1:51:27.760 --> 1:51:33.639 it's a risk. Is it a numerically large risk? Yeah, 1:51:33.720 --> 1:51:38.080 it's hard to say. It's probably the facility. Sure, let's 1:51:38.080 --> 1:51:39.960 go back to I'd like to come back to that. 1:51:40.240 --> 1:51:43.240 Let me roll up the carcass manager, push you, because 1:51:43.280 --> 1:51:46.320 I think that's a significant one. So you know, come back. 1:51:46.400 --> 1:51:48.880 We've got you know that slow, dear to dear animal 1:51:49.000 --> 1:51:52.840 movement that it's it's hard to change that one. But 1:51:52.960 --> 1:51:56.360 then we have human facilitated disease movement. We talked about 1:51:56.360 --> 1:51:59.840 it originally with raccoon rabies. We moved raccoons with rabies 1:51:59.920 --> 1:52:03.599 or round. So we move deer with c w D around. 1:52:03.680 --> 1:52:08.240 We moved elk with CWD to South Korea, very clear. 1:52:08.760 --> 1:52:12.040 So the industry has a role. But carcasses are another one. 1:52:12.439 --> 1:52:17.000 So let's say you go out hunting in Wyoming in 1:52:17.680 --> 1:52:21.040 Converse County and you killed the mule deer buck of 1:52:21.080 --> 1:52:24.599 a lifetime. Yeah, and you know, five year old deer 1:52:25.000 --> 1:52:28.280 and like I said, it's coin flip. Say he's got 1:52:28.360 --> 1:52:32.240 c w D. So you bring that carcass, you know, 1:52:32.400 --> 1:52:37.840 back to your domicile, and you butcher yourself because that's 1:52:37.920 --> 1:52:41.200 what you've always done. Or you've got a few hundred 1:52:41.240 --> 1:52:44.280 acres here, you know there's there's parts left over when 1:52:44.320 --> 1:52:48.080 you're done butchering. You've got the spinal column, you've got 1:52:48.240 --> 1:52:52.920 the skull, unless it's all the parts where where infectious 1:52:52.960 --> 1:52:56.639 agent is concentrated. What do you do with that waste material? 1:52:57.360 --> 1:53:00.760 Do you dump it out on the back forty? If 1:53:00.840 --> 1:53:05.320 you do that, does that constitute a very real risk 1:53:05.600 --> 1:53:11.120 of introducing infectious agent to a naive, susceptible host population. 1:53:11.200 --> 1:53:15.800 The answer is yes. So many states and many of 1:53:15.840 --> 1:53:22.800 your localities have introduced bands on carcass movement. Minnesota's done it, um, 1:53:23.320 --> 1:53:25.920 you know, Michigan's working on one. We've had some some 1:53:26.080 --> 1:53:32.479 carcass movement regulations. Processed meat and a clean skull cap, 1:53:32.680 --> 1:53:37.320 but but leave the rest behind type thing. And so 1:53:37.600 --> 1:53:41.479 that's a very real risk that has been dealt with 1:53:41.720 --> 1:53:45.479 by regulatory means. But regulations don't cure everything. We need 1:53:45.640 --> 1:53:48.200 education to go along with it. Because if you went 1:53:48.280 --> 1:53:50.960 to Colorado and or Wyoming and killed that big deer 1:53:51.080 --> 1:53:53.880 and brought at home, you might have not know that 1:53:54.120 --> 1:53:56.720 you were violating the law. So we have to have 1:53:56.960 --> 1:54:00.320 education to go along with it. And and and the 1:54:00.439 --> 1:54:03.200 answer is to that, if you know, if you're going 1:54:03.320 --> 1:54:06.519 to do that, make sure that those carcass parts don't 1:54:06.760 --> 1:54:09.120 end up out on the back forty, that they go 1:54:09.280 --> 1:54:13.360 to a landfill or end up underground where any infectious 1:54:13.400 --> 1:54:17.560 agent is not available to be picked up, ingested, or 1:54:17.600 --> 1:54:21.280 inhaled by another deer. So that one's easy if we 1:54:21.520 --> 1:54:23.720 know what we're doing and we pay attention to it. 1:54:24.280 --> 1:54:30.200 So the carcass movement bands um have have a place. 1:54:30.960 --> 1:54:33.240 But when we when we boil it down, is there 1:54:33.280 --> 1:54:38.000 a way to appropriately manage carcasses? The answer is yes, 1:54:38.200 --> 1:54:41.480 make sure it ends up underground. You know what's interesting 1:54:41.520 --> 1:54:45.120 about those bands is that it's never like Colorado saying 1:54:45.600 --> 1:54:49.200 don't export. Yeah, nobody hasn't. When you guys leave, leave 1:54:49.200 --> 1:54:54.680 all the bones and the skulls here. Don't bring from 1:54:54.680 --> 1:54:59.760 Colorado here, right, It's an important people have it like 1:55:00.000 --> 1:55:03.200 at that shot out of here. Well, I can remember 1:55:03.640 --> 1:55:06.120 my dad going out west hunting and they would bring 1:55:06.640 --> 1:55:09.640 the whole the mule, deer, the elk, whatever, you know. 1:55:09.680 --> 1:55:11.520 They packed them with ice and brought him back I remember, 1:55:11.680 --> 1:55:14.040 you know, butchering him at the facility here. Where did 1:55:14.080 --> 1:55:15.880 those bones end up in it? I used to be 1:55:15.880 --> 1:55:18.000 a little bit of a conspiracy theorist in this whole thing. Oh, 1:55:18.080 --> 1:55:19.640 there had to be some guys down there who brought 1:55:19.680 --> 1:55:22.080 in among those big monster bucks from someplace to improve 1:55:22.120 --> 1:55:24.600 their genetics. Well that sounds crazy, doesn't it. So they 1:55:24.760 --> 1:55:27.120 let it out down there and in the Mount Horribor area, 1:55:27.200 --> 1:55:30.400 and so it's yeah, well they don't shoot the deer 1:55:30.440 --> 1:55:31.840 with the tag and it's here, you know that kind 1:55:31.880 --> 1:55:35.280 of thing um or or it was a facility, there 1:55:35.440 --> 1:55:38.960 was something like that, And then it could have been innoculous, 1:55:39.840 --> 1:55:42.920 just just some old boy like my dad who you know, 1:55:43.040 --> 1:55:45.320 bringing is is and and that's what they did, you know, 1:55:45.480 --> 1:55:46.840 it's just what we did. I know a lot of 1:55:46.880 --> 1:55:48.720 people that would like to pin it on your dad. 1:55:49.200 --> 1:55:54.760 Well it's it's unlikely but that anyone individual. But if 1:55:54.800 --> 1:55:58.080 we're looking for theories about how disease got to a 1:55:58.160 --> 1:56:02.000 place like Wisconsin, nine hundred miles from the nearest infected 1:56:02.080 --> 1:56:06.000 area in the state of Colorado, we have those possible explanations. 1:56:06.160 --> 1:56:08.560 Was it dear to deer to deer it's not very 1:56:08.680 --> 1:56:11.040 likely that the deer from Colorado got up and walked 1:56:11.080 --> 1:56:14.000 across the Mississippi and came to Mount horrib to settle down. 1:56:14.520 --> 1:56:17.160 So then we start looking at the other possibilities. Could 1:56:17.240 --> 1:56:20.480 it have been human assisted movement, either of live deer 1:56:21.000 --> 1:56:24.400 to release out in that area. Yeah, it's possibility, pretty 1:56:24.400 --> 1:56:26.640 hard to prove at this point in time. Could it. 1:56:26.920 --> 1:56:29.920 Could it have been a hunter who inadvertently brought a 1:56:30.040 --> 1:56:33.200 positive back and you know, and carcass parts ended up 1:56:33.200 --> 1:56:36.880 out on the back. Forty Absolutely, that's possible. Could it 1:56:37.000 --> 1:56:41.560 have been other materials? Um, it's real interesting that that 1:56:41.840 --> 1:56:46.120 prions themselves, It turns out bind to some soil particles. 1:56:47.000 --> 1:56:50.000 They bind the clay particles much better than they do 1:56:50.280 --> 1:56:54.320 to sand particles. And and that's when we think about 1:56:54.360 --> 1:56:57.600 that deer who's shedding infectious agent out into the environment. Well, 1:56:57.720 --> 1:56:59.760 when it rains, it all out of wash away in 1:57:00.040 --> 1:57:02.280 to the into the river and will end up in 1:57:02.320 --> 1:57:04.360 the Mississippi. And it ought to be a problem down 1:57:04.440 --> 1:57:07.360 in the in the Gulf Delta, right, But it turns 1:57:07.400 --> 1:57:10.400 out the preons themselves can bind very tightly. They form 1:57:10.440 --> 1:57:14.560 a chemical bond with some soil particles. Which helps explain 1:57:14.840 --> 1:57:18.000 why they don't wash away and why they remain in 1:57:18.120 --> 1:57:22.400 the environment because they can be bound to soil particles 1:57:24.000 --> 1:57:29.080 the road like sand. Now from a from a disease standpoint, 1:57:29.200 --> 1:57:32.040 there's another part of that that it turns out when 1:57:32.280 --> 1:57:37.840 preon protein molecules are bound to clay particles, they are 1:57:37.960 --> 1:57:43.320 more infectious than they were on their own. It turns 1:57:43.360 --> 1:57:48.600 out that their infectivity is increased nearly seven hundred fold 1:57:49.320 --> 1:57:55.400 in that bound state. Okay, and we've seen where you know, 1:57:55.440 --> 1:57:58.560 a cow's stomach is a pretty harsh place, and you 1:57:58.600 --> 1:58:01.400 would think that if you put preons into a cow's 1:58:01.440 --> 1:58:04.960 stomach that's four chambered stomach, that it would degrade. And 1:58:05.080 --> 1:58:08.240 actually it does degrade. Preon is quite a bit. It 1:58:08.440 --> 1:58:12.640 lowers the tighter. But if these preons are bound to 1:58:12.800 --> 1:58:17.760 soil particles, it increases their infectivity. So maybe these soil 1:58:17.840 --> 1:58:22.200 particles help act as chaperones through the system to get 1:58:22.400 --> 1:58:27.000 in so they're bound tightly and they're more infectious. Now 1:58:27.080 --> 1:58:32.040 you've talked about the possibility of a bottle of urine. Okay. 1:58:32.440 --> 1:58:37.280 So urine is collected at captive deer facilities okay um 1:58:37.480 --> 1:58:40.120 or captive elk facilities where they have greats under the 1:58:40.240 --> 1:58:43.120 floor and the deer you know, urinate and so the 1:58:43.520 --> 1:58:47.960 it's it's collected up in theory, you know, process purified 1:58:48.080 --> 1:58:52.120 to some degree um and aggregated together, and then sooner 1:58:52.240 --> 1:58:54.320 or later it ends up on a sporting good shop 1:58:54.600 --> 1:58:56.760 or you can buy it online. Things like that. For 1:58:56.880 --> 1:59:01.040 a lure, you know, doan estrius. So there's currently a 1:59:01.120 --> 1:59:05.800 great debate going on and some states have taken proactive 1:59:05.800 --> 1:59:09.400 action and they've said, hey, don't use urine based lures 1:59:09.440 --> 1:59:12.080 in our states. Several states have done that because they 1:59:12.280 --> 1:59:15.640 identify that there is a risk, a small risk, but 1:59:15.720 --> 1:59:18.880 there is a risk. And if we've learned anything in Wisconsin, 1:59:18.960 --> 1:59:21.280 if you don't have c w D, now you want 1:59:21.320 --> 1:59:23.680 to keep it that way. And so other states have 1:59:23.800 --> 1:59:27.480 paid attention. They're putting in strong protective measures. Don't bring 1:59:27.560 --> 1:59:31.040 carcasses into my state, don't bring live deer into my state, 1:59:31.480 --> 1:59:35.240 and don't use urine based lures in my state. And 1:59:35.360 --> 1:59:38.480 that's a decision that a state makes on their own. Yeah, 1:59:38.480 --> 1:59:40.560 I mean, so a state, even if you just look 1:59:40.560 --> 1:59:43.760 at the state's function as like protecting you know, even 1:59:43.800 --> 1:59:48.520 from the most conservative thing, facilitating business you're protecting the 1:59:48.600 --> 1:59:53.320 deer hunting industry, protecting the bigger industry than the piss industry, 1:59:53.600 --> 1:59:56.520 and it's a much bigger industry than the captive deer industry. 1:59:56.920 --> 2:00:01.400 Wisconsin makes way more money selling deer license and having 2:00:01.440 --> 2:00:04.440 people hunt wild deer than they do being a than 2:00:04.480 --> 2:00:07.680 they do being a service for the captive deering. So 2:00:08.440 --> 2:00:11.200 science has shown pretty clearly that you know, a deer 2:00:12.080 --> 2:00:15.240 with c w D is shedding infectious agent in their urine, 2:00:15.920 --> 2:00:20.160 but it's pretty dilute, okay. So the argument is that 2:00:20.440 --> 2:00:22.760 if you have a bottle, you know, a one once 2:00:22.840 --> 2:00:27.600 bottle of deer urine, it's not enough. Even if it 2:00:27.880 --> 2:00:31.800 did have CWD preons in it, it's likely not enough 2:00:32.600 --> 2:00:36.680 to transmit disease. That okay opinion from the industry or 2:00:36.720 --> 2:00:42.480 from science. By it it's promoted by it's promoted. That's 2:00:42.720 --> 2:00:46.080 that's promoted by the industry right now. Um, that the 2:00:46.240 --> 2:00:51.520 bottle of urine has it's it's negligible risk, okay. But 2:00:51.680 --> 2:00:54.520 one of the things, So we just talked about what 2:00:54.760 --> 2:00:59.160 happens to a preon protein when it binds to soil particles, 2:00:59.600 --> 2:01:02.680 and that really hasn't been entered into the equation. So 2:01:02.840 --> 2:01:05.640 how do people use dealer? I mean, some of them 2:01:05.720 --> 2:01:08.240 are gonna squirt it into cotton balls in the top 2:01:08.280 --> 2:01:11.920 of an old thirty five millimiter film cam canister case, 2:01:12.480 --> 2:01:14.640 hang it from a branch of a of a tree. 2:01:15.600 --> 2:01:18.360 Others are gonna spray it all over, either a mock 2:01:18.560 --> 2:01:22.800 or a real scrape, which is kind of a deer magnet, 2:01:23.040 --> 2:01:25.960 so lots of animals come there. So now, let's just 2:01:26.160 --> 2:01:30.400 suppose that a bottle of urine did have preons in it, 2:01:30.520 --> 2:01:33.440 which wasn't enough if we squirted into deer's mouth, it 2:01:33.440 --> 2:01:35.840 wouldn't be enough to give that dear c w D. 2:01:36.600 --> 2:01:39.280 But now we're squirting it on the ground where those 2:01:39.360 --> 2:01:44.280 prens might bind to soil particles, and a deer might 2:01:45.120 --> 2:01:48.760 lick that soil and ingest that preon protein that's now 2:01:48.920 --> 2:01:56.240 bound to clay particles. The the infectivities. I think the 2:01:56.280 --> 2:02:00.040 paper says SI I was rounding to seven hundred, So 2:02:00.200 --> 2:02:03.920 that hasn't been entered into into the equation yet. Is 2:02:04.080 --> 2:02:08.320 that enough? I don't know. I can't honestly, I can't 2:02:08.360 --> 2:02:11.000 answer that question. Is that enough of an increase in 2:02:11.080 --> 2:02:15.400 concentration where that bottle of urine constitutes a risk. I 2:02:15.520 --> 2:02:18.640 can't answer that question, but a question I can answer 2:02:19.240 --> 2:02:24.320 that if you are a state agency whose responsibility is 2:02:24.400 --> 2:02:27.400 to look out for the welfare of that dear resource 2:02:27.480 --> 2:02:30.760 for current and future generations of people in your state, 2:02:31.240 --> 2:02:34.160 if you've seen the impacts of c w D and 2:02:34.320 --> 2:02:36.240 you believe you don't have it, and you want to 2:02:36.280 --> 2:02:39.080 do everything you can to keep c w D out 2:02:39.120 --> 2:02:42.680 of your state, is it a reasonable thing for that 2:02:42.920 --> 2:02:47.240 state to promulgate rules to say, hey, we'd prefer if 2:02:47.280 --> 2:02:50.320 you didn't use urine based lures in your in our state. 2:02:51.240 --> 2:02:54.879 I think it's very reasonable that a state making that decision, 2:02:54.960 --> 2:02:58.440 they've looked at the information, they're making a calculated decision 2:02:58.560 --> 2:03:01.960 on the level of risk they're willing to incur on 2:03:02.120 --> 2:03:05.360 behalf of the people of their state. How can you 2:03:05.480 --> 2:03:08.800 argue with that? And if and if an overwhelming body 2:03:08.880 --> 2:03:12.200 of evidence were to emerge that contradicts that they could 2:03:12.240 --> 2:03:17.360 walk back lift the band? Aren't there a synthetic based 2:03:17.440 --> 2:03:21.320 lures that that people use? And I don't know. I don't. 2:03:21.640 --> 2:03:23.440 I gave up on that stuff. I figure if I 2:03:23.520 --> 2:03:25.560 can't sitting in a tree stand, if I can't have 2:03:25.680 --> 2:03:28.000 a deer walk up close to me. You know, probably 2:03:28.040 --> 2:03:31.000 having lures isn't the way I want to go. Well, 2:03:31.080 --> 2:03:32.760 folks will try all a man or stuff. All you 2:03:32.800 --> 2:03:36.200 have to do concluding thoughts, I are just smoking cigarettes 2:03:36.200 --> 2:03:39.840 something your stand brings him in. Well, I know that. Well, 2:03:40.440 --> 2:03:47.440 Doug Buckman during um there's special has special properties of 2:03:47.480 --> 2:03:54.560 his own urine, which is very enticing to dear yawn scrape. Yes, photo, 2:03:55.000 --> 2:03:58.600 he's a lot of photo documentary evidence that the dog 2:03:58.680 --> 2:04:02.360 buck Man urine is the most potent lure. But I 2:04:02.400 --> 2:04:03.920 don't know, I want I'd have to test your ear 2:04:03.960 --> 2:04:10.000 and make sure it's not positive. Yeah, yeah, he was 2:04:10.560 --> 2:04:13.360 actually been sending a urin around from the c w 2:04:13.560 --> 2:04:19.840 D area. You gotta concluding thought, I've I've got I've 2:04:19.880 --> 2:04:22.560 got a few. If you humor me, give me a 2:04:22.640 --> 2:04:25.040 couple of minutes here, because it's kind of boiled down. 2:04:25.120 --> 2:04:27.000 I get asked all the time, what can I do? 2:04:27.800 --> 2:04:31.040 What can people do about CWD? And people and individual 2:04:31.160 --> 2:04:34.640 hunters can't cure c w D. They're not gonna create 2:04:34.720 --> 2:04:39.600 the vaccine things like that, so but what can people do? Well, 2:04:39.680 --> 2:04:41.800 one of the things I think is really important is 2:04:41.880 --> 2:04:45.720 to be knowledgeable about really what CWD is. It's things 2:04:45.800 --> 2:04:48.200 that we've talked about today. Now, if you go to 2:04:48.560 --> 2:04:51.320 some sportsmen's clubs, or go to hunting camps, or go 2:04:51.440 --> 2:04:54.840 to a tavern and you get into a conversation about CWD, 2:04:55.040 --> 2:04:57.680 you'll hear some things about CWD. They'll make you scratch 2:04:57.760 --> 2:05:04.040 your head. Could really and and so alternative points of 2:05:04.120 --> 2:05:07.720 view are out there. There's places on the on the 2:05:07.800 --> 2:05:10.920 Worldwide Web that you know, if you tripped looked up 2:05:11.000 --> 2:05:14.400 facts about CWD or the truth about CWD, you might 2:05:14.480 --> 2:05:16.920 hear some things that are vastly different than what we've 2:05:16.960 --> 2:05:21.320 heard today. A good Google uh tip is never type 2:05:21.360 --> 2:05:26.080 in the truth about the truth about X. It's a 2:05:26.160 --> 2:05:28.880 good way to get the not truth. Ye. I think 2:05:28.920 --> 2:05:32.440 it's really important if people have a better understanding of 2:05:32.560 --> 2:05:35.080 what c w D is, what the risks are, what 2:05:35.200 --> 2:05:38.000 the potential outcomes down the road are. That they'll care 2:05:38.040 --> 2:05:40.920 about c w D, but they need to learn about it. 2:05:41.000 --> 2:05:44.280 They need to get accurate information. So if you're gonna Google, 2:05:44.880 --> 2:05:48.560 go to scholar dot Google dot com and enter in 2:05:48.680 --> 2:05:52.240 c w D and pre on disease, and there you'll 2:05:52.280 --> 2:05:55.320 get you'll get all your links will be peer reviewed 2:05:55.640 --> 2:05:59.560 scientific publications so learn about c w D and and 2:06:00.080 --> 2:06:02.400 us CWT kind of the way we're doing here today. 2:06:02.400 --> 2:06:06.240 I think that's really really important. Another thing is obviously 2:06:06.320 --> 2:06:08.880 going to be working with government. If you don't like 2:06:09.160 --> 2:06:11.560 what you see, if you don't like the fact that 2:06:12.000 --> 2:06:15.440 you know, captive servant operations with c w D are 2:06:15.520 --> 2:06:19.040 still out there on the landscape, haven't been depopulated, work 2:06:19.120 --> 2:06:21.760 with government. If you don't like the way your natural 2:06:21.800 --> 2:06:25.800 resource agency is responding to c w D, work with government. 2:06:26.200 --> 2:06:28.520 It's not gonna do much good to sit in hunting 2:06:28.640 --> 2:06:31.360 camp and, you know, gripe about the d n R. 2:06:31.840 --> 2:06:34.640 That's it's really not effective. It might be fun, it 2:06:34.720 --> 2:06:37.600 might be entertaining, but it's really not effective. So work 2:06:37.680 --> 2:06:41.520 with government at the appropriate levels and recognize and engage 2:06:41.600 --> 2:06:45.640 and recognize that the d NR is has you know, 2:06:45.840 --> 2:06:49.440 Natural Resource Agency and Agricultural Agency are working with a 2:06:49.520 --> 2:06:53.800 set of laws created by legislators, and so quite often 2:06:54.360 --> 2:06:56.800 the d n R is not the appropriate level. If 2:06:56.840 --> 2:06:59.360 you want to seek change, you're gonna have to talk 2:06:59.400 --> 2:07:05.120 to the just is. He's talks a lot about people 2:07:05.640 --> 2:07:10.440 who are blaming the d n R, blaming the State 2:07:10.520 --> 2:07:13.120 Fish and Game Agency for things that are coming from 2:07:13.120 --> 2:07:16.320 the legislature, right, the DNR has to work within the 2:07:16.720 --> 2:07:20.360 statutory guidelines provided by the legislation and those people are 2:07:21.280 --> 2:07:26.760 voted in and they are responsible to uh to their constituents. 2:07:27.360 --> 2:07:30.000 So working with government is a big one. Another way 2:07:30.040 --> 2:07:33.880 of working with government, though, is is promoting surveillance. You know, 2:07:33.960 --> 2:07:37.640 we've seen in in state after state there's fewer dollars 2:07:37.720 --> 2:07:41.840 available for surveillance. So the Wisconsin d n R has 2:07:41.880 --> 2:07:45.560 surveillance has gone down. Many other states surveillance has gone 2:07:45.600 --> 2:07:47.800 down because they don't have the money to do it. 2:07:48.520 --> 2:07:51.160 So the only way we learn more about distribution and 2:07:51.240 --> 2:07:54.640 prevalence is CWD is to do surveillance. So that's another 2:07:54.720 --> 2:07:57.120 way you can have an impact by talking to government. 2:07:57.600 --> 2:08:02.520 Another one's promoting research things, you know, epidemiological research, learning 2:08:02.520 --> 2:08:05.400 about how disease moves, learning about more about the risk 2:08:05.480 --> 2:08:08.480 to humans, learning about the risk to domestic livestock, learning 2:08:08.480 --> 2:08:11.960 about the possibilities of vaccines. We do that through research, 2:08:12.040 --> 2:08:15.320 and the amount of money available for for disease research 2:08:15.640 --> 2:08:18.720 has diminished greatly over time. So there's places where you 2:08:18.800 --> 2:08:22.280 can work with government. But now even more what can 2:08:22.320 --> 2:08:24.400 a hunter do well? We talked about it you can 2:08:24.480 --> 2:08:27.160 hunt deer. You know, they say, I believe that. You know, 2:08:27.280 --> 2:08:30.480 taking deer offul landscape, reducing densities is good from a 2:08:30.560 --> 2:08:35.520 whole host of reasons. In addition to disease management. If 2:08:35.600 --> 2:08:39.560 you feed and bait, those are probably not good things. 2:08:40.160 --> 2:08:45.080 Those could be considered risk factors. So the analogy they're 2:08:45.280 --> 2:08:47.680 a great one is if you have young kids and 2:08:47.800 --> 2:08:50.160 you put them in daycare. If all the kids in 2:08:50.280 --> 2:08:53.280 daycare were healthy, daycare would be healthy and your kid 2:08:53.360 --> 2:08:55.600 would never come home and give you some illness that 2:08:55.720 --> 2:08:58.680 you didn't want. But that's not the reality. So one 2:08:59.000 --> 2:09:01.800 little kid will go into take care with the cold 2:09:01.960 --> 2:09:04.800 or the flu, spread it around to everybody else, and 2:09:04.840 --> 2:09:08.440 then those children go home to their respective families. So 2:09:08.560 --> 2:09:10.720 now let's move that into the deer world, where if 2:09:10.720 --> 2:09:13.720 you're baiting out there on the landscape, you're putting corn 2:09:13.840 --> 2:09:16.520 or some other attractant out there. If all the deer 2:09:16.560 --> 2:09:19.840 are perfectly healthy, it's not a bad idea, right, Okay, 2:09:19.960 --> 2:09:23.320 there's no risk of disease transmission. But now let's put 2:09:23.360 --> 2:09:26.520 a little bovine tuberculosis in the system. Let's put a 2:09:26.600 --> 2:09:29.680 little bit of chronic wasting disease into the system. And 2:09:29.800 --> 2:09:32.600 now if we have one sick animal coming into that 2:09:32.760 --> 2:09:37.200 pile of bait or that attractant, there, they shed infectious 2:09:37.280 --> 2:09:43.360 agent into that bait, changing saliva and breath exactly. So 2:09:43.680 --> 2:09:47.600 multiple animals are coming in, so it elevates the risk 2:09:47.680 --> 2:09:51.760 of disease transmission. So feeding and baiting, anything that artificially 2:09:51.840 --> 2:09:58.839 congregates animals in association with disease enhances their risk. Carcass management, 2:09:59.040 --> 2:10:01.320 there's a big one we talked about. So if you're 2:10:01.320 --> 2:10:03.720 gonna go hunting in you know, if I'm gonna go 2:10:03.840 --> 2:10:06.960 hunting in in Iowa County, Wisconsin, and I live in 2:10:07.440 --> 2:10:10.280 northern Wisconsin, or I live in Michigan or Minnesota, if 2:10:10.320 --> 2:10:13.040 I can get it across the border, if I butcher 2:10:13.120 --> 2:10:16.840 that animal myself, make sure that the carcass parts end 2:10:16.960 --> 2:10:19.520 up not in reach of a deer, not on the 2:10:19.600 --> 2:10:23.240 back forty preferably at a landfill. That's a solid thing 2:10:23.280 --> 2:10:26.120 that hunters can do to help reduce the chance of 2:10:26.160 --> 2:10:30.440 of CWD loving bearing on your own how deep uh, 2:10:30.520 --> 2:10:32.880 probably deep enough where a raccoon is not going to 2:10:32.960 --> 2:10:35.000 dig it up and expose it back back to the 2:10:35.160 --> 2:10:38.320 deer um. Now, some people might might go, oh, you 2:10:38.360 --> 2:10:41.200 shouldn't have said that something like that, because there is 2:10:41.880 --> 2:10:45.400 obviously always a chance that effluent would percolate down get 2:10:45.440 --> 2:10:49.879 into groundwater. But that mantra back from the seventies dilution 2:10:50.000 --> 2:10:54.640 is the solution to pollution probably applies here. That getting 2:10:54.760 --> 2:10:59.120 those carcass materials out of where they are a bile 2:10:59.200 --> 2:11:04.400 available to healthy, naive, susceptible deer. That's what's key. Um, 2:11:05.080 --> 2:11:06.680 if you wanted to get technical, if you want to, 2:11:06.720 --> 2:11:08.680 if you really want to stop pre on movement, you 2:11:08.800 --> 2:11:12.879 go to a landfill that uses a clay liner system. Remember, 2:11:13.000 --> 2:11:16.120 clay binds pre on particles. What turns out, if you 2:11:16.200 --> 2:11:19.320 put a clay liner under a landfill, you will stop 2:11:19.440 --> 2:11:21.879 pre on movements so it won't go into the effluent 2:11:22.000 --> 2:11:25.920 that then gets discharged out onto the farmer's fields. Okay, 2:11:26.280 --> 2:11:29.560 so there's there's science behind that. I think the last 2:11:29.600 --> 2:11:32.280 thing that people can do to learn more about is if, 2:11:32.520 --> 2:11:34.640 especially if you hunt in an area where c w 2:11:34.840 --> 2:11:37.760 D is, get your carcasses tested. I mean, that's in 2:11:37.960 --> 2:11:40.960 line with recommendations coming from the World Health Organization in 2:11:41.040 --> 2:11:43.920 the Centers for Disease Control or the surrounding area YEP. 2:11:44.200 --> 2:11:47.320 If you're if you're close to disease, consider having your 2:11:47.360 --> 2:11:49.600 deer tested. Now, I'm not going to tell you not 2:11:49.760 --> 2:11:52.440 to eat it. That's your personal decision based on your 2:11:52.480 --> 2:11:56.040 own capacity to tolerate risk. But you've learned about c 2:11:56.320 --> 2:11:59.040 w D, you're doing your best not to contribute to 2:11:59.120 --> 2:12:02.120 movement of CEDA be a D. Getting that dear tested 2:12:02.200 --> 2:12:04.840 makes a makes a you know, kind of common sense. 2:12:05.680 --> 2:12:07.760 So so those are the kinds of things like I say, 2:12:07.800 --> 2:12:10.400 when I walk into an audience and people say, well, 2:12:10.480 --> 2:12:12.280 what can we do? That's what I always try and 2:12:12.360 --> 2:12:15.200 close with, here's the concrete things you can do. You 2:12:15.320 --> 2:12:18.800 can't fix it, but you can help. That's good stuff, man. 2:12:19.120 --> 2:12:21.600 And for most people to test it, it's their UM, 2:12:22.040 --> 2:12:24.920 local Game and Fish or Department Natural Resource. Talk to 2:12:24.960 --> 2:12:29.080 your natural resource the agency UM if they are not 2:12:29.280 --> 2:12:32.120 able to accommodate it, and I believe most can, but 2:12:32.240 --> 2:12:35.400 if they're not, you could talk to a veterinarian. You know, 2:12:35.480 --> 2:12:38.960 a local veterinarian who has the ability to collect this 2:12:39.080 --> 2:12:42.560 tissue samples for a hunter and then submit them to 2:12:42.680 --> 2:12:46.960 a state diagnostic laboratory. So it's it's doable any place 2:12:47.240 --> 2:12:48.720 here in the Cheese State. What do you guys call 2:12:48.760 --> 2:12:51.960 this state Wisconsin? Yeah? I mean you know, I was 2:12:52.000 --> 2:12:53.720 trying to be like a bad writer who uses like 2:12:53.760 --> 2:12:56.400 little synonyms here and there. So let's just this one 2:12:56.520 --> 2:13:01.440 year old crooner like that kind of line, uh Wisconsin. Yeah. 2:13:01.520 --> 2:13:11.200 But what is this? Help me out? Man? Here in 2:13:11.200 --> 2:13:15.840 America's dairy land. Uh, it's free. Yeah, And I would 2:13:15.880 --> 2:13:19.480 say this I know in our area. UM over at 2:13:19.560 --> 2:13:21.880 rock Bridge, at the rock Bridge Store, an old and 2:13:21.920 --> 2:13:26.160 dear friend of mine, Sharon Miller UH is one of 2:13:26.200 --> 2:13:29.560 the testing UH facilities, and her son has gone through 2:13:29.600 --> 2:13:31.760 the training and takes out the lymph notes and does 2:13:31.800 --> 2:13:33.720 all that work. It's real simple. You can just drop 2:13:33.800 --> 2:13:35.720 the head off obviously. I you've got a big old 2:13:35.760 --> 2:13:37.400 monster buck and stuff that you're gonna want to get 2:13:37.480 --> 2:13:39.800 mount takes. But they'll they'll work with you on that. 2:13:40.040 --> 2:13:44.400 And then, UM, so that's on this side of the county, 2:13:44.480 --> 2:13:45.920 or it's in just a few miles this way, but 2:13:46.000 --> 2:13:48.200 then a few miles the other way over in Sauk 2:13:48.280 --> 2:13:50.400 County in Bear Valley, which is one of the high 2:13:50.440 --> 2:13:54.080 prevalence areas. UH A live look taxidermy over there. Bill 2:13:54.640 --> 2:13:56.160 you can't think of Bill's last name right now, but 2:13:56.240 --> 2:14:01.080 he mounted the standard. Um he also uh is a 2:14:02.480 --> 2:14:06.080 testing for not a testing facility, but a drop off facility, 2:14:06.520 --> 2:14:08.560 and they too will take out the limp nodes and 2:14:08.600 --> 2:14:12.600 do that whole thing. Yeah, bring the whole damn head down, 2:14:12.680 --> 2:14:17.080 fill out a piece of paper, and then it's your 2:14:17.280 --> 2:14:21.680 Your results were sent uh sent to you. So I'll 2:14:21.720 --> 2:14:25.040 give my concluding thought. How's that hit it? Man? Uh? 2:14:26.680 --> 2:14:30.400 I feel better uh listening to you today, and I 2:14:30.520 --> 2:14:32.480 thank very thank you very much for that. I mean, 2:14:32.520 --> 2:14:34.800 I feel like I've I've been spending a lot of 2:14:34.880 --> 2:14:38.680 time learning about it, uh as much as I can. 2:14:38.800 --> 2:14:41.960 And then there is a lot of misinformation and uh, 2:14:43.960 --> 2:14:49.080 but most of what I have read you um explained 2:14:49.120 --> 2:14:51.320 today and some of the ways that I didn't quite 2:14:51.600 --> 2:14:54.160 get it and then boiling it down, which I think 2:14:54.240 --> 2:14:57.400 is so important. Uh. And so this has been a 2:14:57.440 --> 2:15:00.880 really important discussion for me. And like you're an Oak, 2:15:01.120 --> 2:15:02.600 that you're an Oak guy, if that makes a big 2:15:02.680 --> 2:15:05.400 difference too. So I saw Doug lose a big bet 2:15:05.520 --> 2:15:09.200 on Oaks one time. That was true, but I'm not 2:15:09.320 --> 2:15:13.520 sure about the person who decided. I'm still not happy 2:15:13.600 --> 2:15:21.280 with how we decided that. Um. Yes, it's ten years ago. 2:15:21.560 --> 2:15:25.520 I need to hear this. How many there's an oak 2:15:25.560 --> 2:15:27.360 tree drop, you know, it's one of those that was 2:15:27.440 --> 2:15:32.880 one of those. Uh so, and I think you gave 2:15:33.160 --> 2:15:37.760 you reinforced much of what I'm trying to promote. One 2:15:37.800 --> 2:15:39.480 of the things I did want to clarify though, it 2:15:39.720 --> 2:15:43.960 in the state of Wisconsin that the Department of Natural Resources, Yes, 2:15:44.840 --> 2:15:49.480 enacts with the legislature. Uh. In most cases, legislature tells 2:15:49.520 --> 2:15:54.320 them to UM. But deer farms are under the purview 2:15:54.600 --> 2:15:58.560 of the Department Department of Agriculture, Trade, and Consumer Protection. 2:15:58.760 --> 2:16:01.880 It's farming, not It's a common problem. Yeah, and that's 2:16:02.080 --> 2:16:06.120 those two things are very ins two agencies are seemed 2:16:06.120 --> 2:16:09.040 to be very different and in it it the relationship 2:16:09.200 --> 2:16:11.720 varies depending on what state you're in. In some states, 2:16:11.760 --> 2:16:14.760 the Agriculture and the Natural Resource Agency work very very 2:16:14.840 --> 2:16:18.000 closely together, and in others they don't work so closely together. 2:16:18.200 --> 2:16:21.320 And in other states they have diametrically opposed opinions about 2:16:21.480 --> 2:16:25.880 you know, how management should do. So Yeah, yeah, there's 2:16:25.960 --> 2:16:29.640 multiple um. Some states, Uh, management of the captive industry 2:16:29.720 --> 2:16:33.560 is under the Natural Resource Agency. Uh, there's it's under agriculture. 2:16:33.600 --> 2:16:37.800 It just depends on where you go. Man. Well, anyway, 2:16:37.879 --> 2:16:40.360 thank you very much. This is yeah, fabulous for you guys. 2:16:40.400 --> 2:16:44.880 Are welcome. This was enjoyable. Um my concluder, Brian, thank 2:16:44.920 --> 2:16:51.480 you for like, uh being a federal researcher. Man. Uh, 2:16:52.200 --> 2:16:55.040 there have been better times to be a federal scientist 2:16:55.160 --> 2:16:57.280 than to bring it back. We're gonna bring it back 2:16:57.480 --> 2:16:59.959 to where it's like where you guys get the credit 2:17:00.000 --> 2:17:03.800 you deserve. It's intriguing because you're able to look at stuff. 2:17:04.280 --> 2:17:08.560 You're able to look at stuff and look at problems 2:17:08.800 --> 2:17:12.080 that were gonna be facing down the road, and oftentimes 2:17:13.280 --> 2:17:19.520 private industry just isn't on their radar yet. And you 2:17:19.640 --> 2:17:23.040 need to have some people who are able to exercise 2:17:23.080 --> 2:17:26.680 a level of curiosity and look out at what might 2:17:26.760 --> 2:17:29.959 be coming down the road and have the funding necessary 2:17:30.000 --> 2:17:32.320 to do so, to to fill in some of the 2:17:32.400 --> 2:17:33.920 blanks for us and give it us a sense of 2:17:33.959 --> 2:17:38.039 what's coming. Because it's just we would still be nowhere 2:17:38.160 --> 2:17:40.720 on this if we were relying on private industry. Who 2:17:40.800 --> 2:17:43.400 the hell is gonna put money into this? Well, go 2:17:43.520 --> 2:17:47.760 back to the case of plague in prairie dogs and 2:17:47.920 --> 2:17:52.480 blackfooted ferrets. It took over a decade to develop a 2:17:52.560 --> 2:17:55.760 vaccine candidate and to be able to then create an 2:17:55.879 --> 2:18:00.200 oral formulation in order to solve an endangered species problem. Them. 2:18:00.720 --> 2:18:05.720 Where is the incentive outside of government research facilities to 2:18:05.840 --> 2:18:09.360 have the wherewithal and the capability to be able to 2:18:09.440 --> 2:18:12.040 do that and the patients to be able to do it. 2:18:12.160 --> 2:18:15.280 There is no place else. So there's value. I believe 2:18:15.320 --> 2:18:20.360 there's definitely value, UM, and success stories are not that common, 2:18:20.560 --> 2:18:23.560 but you have to work on these problems. UM. If 2:18:23.600 --> 2:18:27.400 we value our natural resources in our wildlife, we're posed 2:18:27.440 --> 2:18:32.280 today with more diseases than ever before. UM. Emerging infectious 2:18:32.360 --> 2:18:36.200 diseases are are rampant out there on the landscape, and 2:18:36.280 --> 2:18:38.520 if we don't learn about them more, we don't we 2:18:38.600 --> 2:18:40.920 will not learn about those diseases, we will not learn 2:18:40.959 --> 2:18:44.640 about what caused those diseases, and we will not maybe 2:18:44.720 --> 2:18:48.600 most importantly, learn how to effectively deal with, to mitigate 2:18:48.760 --> 2:18:52.280 or manage those diseases. So I appreciate the UH. I 2:18:52.320 --> 2:18:56.160 appreciate the compliment. Yeah, Well, UM, I feel you know, 2:18:56.320 --> 2:18:58.680 I'm I'm indebted to you and and for for the 2:18:58.760 --> 2:19:02.400 lifestyle I have in the natural resources I enjoy. UM. 2:19:02.560 --> 2:19:07.000 I feel indebted to people like you and generations past 2:19:07.120 --> 2:19:10.520 who committed themselves to a professional occupation of you know, 2:19:10.760 --> 2:19:17.080 working on natural resources. It's enjoyable. Thank you, Thanks for 2:19:17.160 --> 2:19:21.160 joining us. You're welcome. I appreciate the opportunity. And Dog, 2:19:21.240 --> 2:19:25.480 thanks for wholesness at your house, manure family, even if 2:19:25.520 --> 2:19:28.320 this might be the last time the family farmers, even 2:19:28.360 --> 2:19:30.280 though I just met a new person to day. Where 2:19:30.280 --> 2:19:33.240 I'm gonna start hanging out instead of Doug's place. It's 2:19:33.320 --> 2:19:35.520 just down the road door, so we're gonna stop body easier. 2:19:35.920 --> 2:19:38.600 I'll yell up. I told Dog come use the bathroom 2:19:38.600 --> 2:19:41.879 and get an internet connection out there, all right. Thanks 2:19:41.920 --> 2:19:42.320 for joining