Yakima Muley Herds in Trouble?

M

missinMT

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Anybody hear about the WDFW biologists confirming that there has been a substaintial loss of deer due to the same lymph disease (some sort of bug) that infected the western washtington blacktail population? Evidently, some local orchardists and ranchers have been reporting large numbers of dead deer on thier property. Not sure if anyone else heard this report or has any other details. I am planning on giving the Yakima WDFW a call on Thursday.
 
Check this out -

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"Roadless areas, in general, represent some of the best fish and wildlife habitat on public lands. The bad news is that there is nothing positive about a road where fish and wildlife habitat are concerned -- absolutely nothing." (B&C Professor, Jack Ward Thomas, Fair Chase, Fall 2005, p.10).
 
Best i could come up with today. i'll check the history in my home pc, thats where i saw it. it is definitely different than the western wa. blacktail issue. this is from april '05

Mule Deer Hair loss in Yakima: Dr. Briggs Hall and Region 3 staff visited a landowner who reported hair loss in the mule deer for which he was providing winter feed. Staff immobilized a subject with mild hair loss and collected lice and sent samples in to Dr. Jim Mertins at the National Veterinary Services Laboratory. Dr. Mertins has identified the lice as Bovicola tibialis, another exotic louse species separate from the exotic louse Bovicola cervicola, which is causing hair loss in the black tailed deer. Bovicola tibialis is the common louse of fallow deer. B. tibialis has been identified in North America on only four previous occasions. The locations were California and British Columbia. Per Dr. Mertins, B. tibialis is a parthenogenic species (no male required for reproduction) and as such can spread more efficiently. The other louse samples sent were all from black tailed deer suffering from hair loss and were identified as B. cervicola.
 
LAST EDITED ON Aug-24-06 AT 07:01PM (MST)[p]Jack is correct in his description of this particular louse and it's relationship to fallow deer. This is not the same louse that infected the blacktail herds in WW. I spoke with the WDFW office in Yakima today. Some highlights were that there were "startling" amounts of calls to the office this past winter about this and the number of dead deer. They mentioned that the department had been tracking this condition in Yakima and Kittitas Counties for a couple of years, but this past winter season was the worst. They have not has any reports that the lice has manifested itself north of I-90. As Jack mentioned, the real scary part of this is that no males are required for reproduction. They really cannot seem to find out how the lice travel and how far this will carry. The office also asked that folks report anything they may see relative to the hair-loss syndrome. They did say that the deer they saw this past winter were "neighborhood" deer and though they have not seen the syndrome at higher elevations, there is some concern for the overall herd health.
 
There was an article in a past Fishing and Hunting News(couple issues) that talked of this very thing. Said hunting in the Yakima area may be terrible in the coming years. They did say the deer herd would build up a natural immunity to these lice but they didn't know how long it would take for the herd to do so??? Doesn't sound good.

Wazzu
 

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