News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
News and Opinion from Sisters, Oregon
Tourists and photographers may well have a very different view across Patterson Ranch in Sisters if new elk ranching rules go into effect this year.
Patterson Ranch and all other cervid ranchers in Oregon would have to double their fencing under new rules proposed by the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. The rules will be voted on by the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission in February.
The double fencing - requiring a second line of fence 30 feet inside the perimeter fence - would serve as a precaution against the spread of disease by preventing nose-to-nose contact between captive elk and wild elk.
Private elk ranchers generally raise elk for breeding stock and for antlers. Some also sell meat. Elk ranchers think the requirement is unnecessary and cost-prohibitive to the point where it could drive some ranchers out of business.
CWD has not been demonstrated to have been transmitted from captive elk to wild elk.
The new rules are the result of petitions by an unlikely coalition of animal rights activists and hunters groups. The petitioners' chief concern is the possible spread of disease - especially Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) from private elk herds into the wild. According to the Oregon Department of Fish & Wildlife (ODFW), "this disease damages portions of the brain and typically causes progressive loss of body condition, behavioral changes, excessive salivation and death."
According to the ODFW, CWD has been "found in free-ranging mule deer, white-tailed deer and elk in northeastern Colorado, southeastern Wyoming, western Nebraska and Saskatchewan. CWD also has been found in captive elk herds in South Dakota, Montana, Oklahoma, Colorado, Nebraska and Saskatchewan, Canada."
CWD has only been found in deer and elk; it has never been transmitted to humans.
"Really, it's a precautionary measure," said Bruce Eddy, who led the ODFW staff who created the recommended new rules of the proposed double fencing requirement.
"(Elk will) nuzzle, touch, lick - and that's the main form of transmission for diseases like CWD and tuberculosis and things like that," he told The Nugget.
Richard Patterson believes the threat of disease transmission from privately held elk to wild elk is overstated.
"We think we're the healthy ones," Patterson told The Nugget when the petitions were first filed in early 2007. "We've all been testing for six years."
Patterson said that when an animal dies or is butchered, the brain stem, tonsils and lymph nodes are shipped to a lab in Ames, Iowa, where they are tested for disease.
His operation has tested 110 times in the past six years - always with negative results.
Patterson thinks that private elk ranchers believe that CWD transmission is actually a greater threat to come from the wild into private herds than the other way around.
Patterson said that double fencing would significantly change the character of one of Sisters' great visual attractions. The rancher likes to see people pull up on Highway 242 adjacent to his ranch to have picnics and take pictures.
"They can enjoy the mountains and the scenery, and it's fun. It's kind of romantic, out of the Old West," he said. Double fencing "would change all that."
Patterson invites members of the public to contact him at [email protected] for information on how to support the ranchers in preventing the adoption of the new requirements.
"(The public can) write letters if they don't want to see the double fence and this place look like Sing Sing," Patterson said.
Eddy said he understands the ranchers' antipathy to double fencing.
"Certainly that would be an imposition; we recognize that," he said.
However, he said, it is too late to put up more fencing when disease is already in the population.
Prevention of disease, he said, "is more important than viewing elk across a double fence."
Eddy noted that some other provisions that the petitioners sought were not recommended.
"We have not suggested eliminating either transfer of licenses or of animals," he said.
ODFW recommendations don't go as far as some petitioners hoped. The MAD-Elk coalition submitted one petition asking ODFW to phase out private ranching over five years. Because of this and the financial costs of increased fencing and insurance, many ranchers feel that the proposed new rules are an effort to drive them out of business.
Eddy says that is not the case.
"It was not our intention to put them out of business or make them go away, and none of the rules we have proposed would do that," he said.
Eddy was full of praise for the operations at Patterson Ranch and of Steve and Kathy Simpson who operate a ranch on Lower Bridge Road east of Sisters. He said that if all operators were like the Pattersons and the Simpsons, fewer people would have concerns about private elk ranching.
Residents have until February 8 to make comments. Comments may be e-mailed to ODFW at [email protected] For more information visit http://www.dfw.state.or.us/agency/commission/minutes/07/december/index.asp and scroll down to Exhibit D: Cervid Rule.
Jim Cornelius is editor in chief of The Nugget and author of “Warriors of the Wildlands: True Tales of the Frontier Partisans.” A history buff, he explores frontier history across three centuries and several continents on his podcast, The Frontier Partisans. For more information visit www.frontierpartisans.com.
Reader Comments(0)