farmerjan
Well-known member
CWD and Listeriosis also cause them to walk in circles.. In fact Listeriosis was called circling disease when it first was "seen"....
Elk
- Thread starter Ky hills
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Ebenezer
Well-known member
Didn't know that. Thanks.
greybeard
Well-known member
Yep, it was even taught as 'circling disease' in ag class in the late '60s.
Travlr
Well-known member
There's even a circling disease in fish. We have some of that in streams close to us. They recommend not eating them.
Actually, non viable young either die before they are born or soon after. Either way, predators don't kill them and usually only scavengers, like corvids eat the dead aborted fetuses or dead newborns.
Humans may have a problem when there are no pollinators left to pollinate their food crops.
Silver
Well-known member
Either way, predators are the single biggest cause of death in elk calves, and therefore have the biggest effect on populations. This is easy to determine simply monitoring predator populations.
Silver, a friend of mine with an elk problem occasionally get a few of our FN brothers to come for a visit and take home a trailer load of meat. The survivors leave for a few weeks as they don't like that kind of pressure. There are no limits with that manner of control.
Dave
Well-known member
The Lolo elk herd was estimated around 12,000 in 1996 when wolves were introduced. That herd is now estimated at about 1,000 animals and the wolves are estimated in the hundreds. If you have ever been there what isn't actual designated wilderness is wilderness for all intents and purposes. The only lose of habitat is regrowth occurring in areas of huge forest fires from decades ago.
Travlr
Well-known member
That's a massive decline. Hard to believe that it was due to wolves, although I suppose hundreds of them would take a lot of elk. Maybe it's one of those things where the balance is so off it would seesaw back and forth for a couple of hundred years if in a natural world. A steep decline in wolves might follow if there wasn't so much beef on the table.
Silver
Well-known member
I have tried many times to get FN help with elk. They seem really excited at first, make big promises but never show up. I have determined that elk are just not moose, as I am sure that if I had a moose problem the FN would show up en masse and my problem would cease to exist in no time flat.
puzzled in oregon
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If the ranchers are lucky the "three top teratogenic pesticides" will be passed onto the wolves.
kenny thomas
Well-known member
May i ask a dumb question? In the areas of Idaho where Elk and wolves are popular what pesticides are being sprayed and for what reason?
Named'em Tamed'em
Well-known member
Killing brush along the side of the roads.
Dave
Well-known member
None. Miles and miles of forest with no roads. South of the Hwy12 (Lolo Pass) is designated wilderness for a long ways. North side is forest service with a few logging roads.
Dave
Well-known member
The wolves will have to move a long ways from Lolo to eat beef. And a lot of them did. Several hundred miles to my neighborhood. A few clear to California. They darn near breed like rabbits.
Do you know what you just wished for? Beef cattle, sheep and hogs are all exposed to those same pesticides. If the teratogenic pesticides are passed on to wolves in the meat they eat, they would be passed on to humans in the meat they eat. Be careful what you wish for!
Since the wind usually blows from the west or southwest in northern Idaho and western Montana, pesticides in the soil where they are sprayed on fields anywhere upwind of the forests where the elk live, are picked up by the wind and travel in weather fronts for hundreds or even thousands of miles. They are then dropped in the rain and snow on all plants, land and surface water down wind of those fields. For example, in 1999, Idaho potato farmers were spraying millions of pounds of fungicides, especially Chlorothalonil (one of the three top teratogenic pesticides) on their potato fields for potato blight. I caught snow in March (months after the fungicides were last sprayed the previous summer) in glass pans in my front yard and sent the water sample to a laboratory to be tested for Chlorothalonil. Our extension agent told me that no Chlorothalonil was being used in our county at that time. The water sample had measurable amounts of Chlorothalonil and a metabolite in it. That meant that Chlorothalonil and the metabolite (its metabolites were more deadly than the Chlorothalonil itself) were on all the foliage on our land, in our creek, where all the livestock and wildlife drank, and in the air all of us were breathing. Recent similar testing of rain and air samples by researchers have contained concerning levels of glyphosate (Roundup) and imidacloprid. In a recent study, the teratogenic insecticide, imidacloprid was found in tested blood samples from newborn babies, and in breast milk, formula and water they drank. In other words, it doesn't matter where pesticides are sprayed, everything still gets exposed, including human fetuses and newborns.
Travlr, in 1994 there were between 20,000 and 23,000 elk in the Yellowstone ecosystem and in spring of 1995 there were only 17,000 according to researchers. The elk population thus went down by 3 to 5 thousand elk before the first 14 wolves were released out of the pen in Yellowstone. The wolves still got the blame for that elk population decline.
