Idaho game farm elk

I watched a hunting show recently of Rammel's elk. It was the sickest thing I have ever seen and that says a lot. They never mentioned the elk being fenced that I noticed. Idaho needs to make high fences illegal fast. People willing to risk Yellowstone elk genetics should swing from a tree. This whole issue pisses me off!

The show was Northwest Hunter and here is what they say about the high-fenced hunt. It's laughable.



Chief Joseph Idaho Elk

Join Rick Young and guest hunters as they go after trophy Rocky Mtn. Elk in Chief Joseph, Idaho. Their skills are put to the test on these self guided hunts.

ROTFGLMAO!!
 
More proof that canned hunts and game farms are a bad idea
Filed under: Wildlife, Politics ? Ray Ring at 4:33 pm on Thursday, September 7, 2006

A couple of weeks ago, I posted about an ex-pro football player, Rulon Jones, who's buying Western ranches so he can sell canned hunts ? where people with no hunting ethics pay thousands of dollars to shoot animals within fenced enclosures.
Now we have the shocking but predictable news from AP:

More than 100 domesticated elk have escaped from a private game reserve on the border of Yellowstone National Park in eastern Idaho, raising fears the animals will blemish the genetic purity of wild herds, spread disease and flummox hunters.
The elk apparently broke through a fence weeks ago on the Chief Joseph hunter?s reserve near Rexburg, on the fringe of the Targhee National Forest, 10 miles from the southwestern border of Yellowstone.

?This is the train wreck we've seen coming for a long time,? Steve Huffaker, director of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game, said Wednesday in announcing the escape.

This leaky canned-hunt operation is near Jones? latest play. The guy who runs it, Rex Rammell, has a history of defying the most basic safety measures required by the Idaho wildlife agency.

Wyoming?s statewide newspaper, the Casper Star-Tribune, adds a good summation and details:

The elk likely charged the fence until they created a large hole. ? ?(The news) hits me very cold. It sends shivers up my back,? said Terry Cleveland, director of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department. ? Cleveland said officials from his office called Idaho and understood the escaped elk are red deer elk, a subspecies of elk not found in North America, ?which would clearly impact the gene pool of native Rocky Mountain elk in the (greater Yellowstone area) and in Wyoming.?

Franz Camenzind, executive director of the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance, said ? disease, such as chronic wasting disease or tuberculosis, is ?potentially catastrophic? for wild elk in the region.

Let's hear it for Wyoming, which has banned game farms, and Montana, which is phasing out the bad idea by banning new game farms.

7 Comments ?

8133
Comment by Ralph Maughan
September 7, 2006 @ 10:05 pm
Worse, it appears that these may not have been domestic elk, but rather red deer, a European species that will mate with North American elk.
This could permanently pollute the genes of Yellowstone elk.

8153
Comment by Erin Miller
September 8, 2006 @ 4:31 pm
This guy is THE bad apple, an example of the few so-called-elk breeders who does nothing other than defy law and regulation. He therefore had this event happen. It's sad that so many people looking for something to complain and rage about group all elk breeders with this kind of guy. He is not a member of the Idaho Elk Breeders Assn., is breaking and has repeatedly broken the law, and believe-you-me, we, for one, are asking many questions to government officials as to why the USDA allowed him to own elk without following regulation.
8155

Comment by mike
September 8, 2006 @ 6:12 pm
Of particular concern, at least to me, has been the reported response of Debra Lawrence, quoted in the Billings paper (http://www.billingsgazette.net/articles/2006/09/07/news/wyoming/40-elk.txt) as being the chief of animal health and livestock for the Idaho Department of Agriculture.

First, as quoted, she seems more concerned that the escape was ?a rotten piece of luck? for the veterinarian who was allowed to keep breeding the things, despite being in and out of trouble over his operations for quite some time. But, even more disturbing is her quoted statement that the animals pose no genetic risk to the adjacent Yellowstone herds because, according to her, ?they're the same species.?
In the Casper paper

(http://www.casperstartribune.net/ar.../wyoming/4908fc4285c24309872571e200027fb5.txt), Terry Cleveland, director of the Wyoming Game and Fish Department, is quoted as having determined that they are, in fact, Asian red deer and not North American elk at all. Red deer will most certainly, given any chance, interbreed with the Yellowstone herds, resulting in fertile mongrel hybrids that will be practically impossible to breed back out. Wasting disease and feedlots notwithstanding, this irresponsible and illegal introduction of nonnative genetics strikes to the very heart of the native genetic stock and very well could contaminate the Yellowstone herds in perpetuity.

Ms Lawrence apparently did not bother to know what species she was dealing with and thus did not comprehend the consequences of her lax regulation. The fact that this happened, the fact that Idaho let it happen, are bad enough. The fact that the supposed chief of animal health and livestock for the Idaho Department of Agriculture seems to have not even known what was going on, not even known what species she was supposed to be regulating, is absolutely outrageous.

The public needs to know so that, although the horse is already out of the barn on this incident, the risk posed by this person holding a job that she isn't bothering to competently fill can be contained before the Idaho Department of Agriculture screws it up again, perhaps with even worse consequences, although I can't immediately think of any worse consequences than what is already happening.

8170
Comment by Robert Hoskins
September 9, 2006 @ 7:23 am
While Wyoming G&F Director Terry Cleveland?s concerns about the possibility of these domestic elk crossing into Wyoming from Idaho are well founded, the concerns are also profoundly hypocritical. THE disease threat for wild ungulates in the Greater Yellowstone is the State of Wyoming?s 22 elk feed grounds, which the Wyoming G&F Department operates using funds supplied by the resident and non-resident hunters as a subsidy to the livestock industry.

The primary consequence of these feed grounds is the maintenance of the disease brucellosis at high rates of infection in western Wyoming?s elk. Brucellosis, of course, is supposedly a great risk to the livestock industry. It isn't; were that true, the feed grounds would have been shut down years ago. That they are still in existence is evidence that the feed grounds serve another purpose.

The elk feed grounds are ghettos, petrie dishes for the breeding of disease. They are public health hazards. Chronic wasting disease is now moving inexorably toward these feed grounds, yet the G&F Dept. refuses to shut them down, and its CWD plan intends to keep the feed grounds open even when the disease strikes the feed grounds.

The purpose of the feed grounds is and always has been to block elk from migrating to traditional winter range, which is now ?reserved? for livestock. In other words, the reason for the feed grounds existence is the livestock industry?s demand to keep forage for itself. This is of course the same reason for the mismanagement of Yellowstone National Park bison.

It's one sorry state of affairs. Of course, one wonders what the consequences for the livestock industry in western Wyoming will be when a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy epidemic strikes the elk feed grounds, all of which are near existing cattle ranches. We hear that no one has proved that CWD will pass to cattle. Well, no one has proved the obverse?that it can't be passed to cattle. Or humans for that matter. We just don't know.

The livestock industry is determined to sacrifice western Wyoming?s elk to a disease epidemic for access to grass, and the Wyoming G&F Department is more than willing to help out. The feed grounds reflect a gross negligence of a public trust.
 
Its interesting that 2 of 3 test came back showing it was a hybrid elk/red deer. Sounds like someone may have tried to get the elk to have some of the non-typical type antlers the red deer have. A game farm owner wouldnt do something crazy like that would he? Never...
 

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