RED DEER GENES OR FALSE POSITIVES?
Rammell’s Elk Disease Free and Genetically Pure, Almost
By Bill Schneider, 11-27-06
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Note: This article has been updated twice with new information. Check out the footnotes at the end of the article. -- Bill Schneider
I’ve written extensively about the Great Elk Escape down in eastern Idaho next to Yellowstone National Park. An undetermined number of elk escaped from a game farm and shooter bull operation owned by the now infamous Rex Rammell, and controversy erupted.
That controversy boiled down to fears that the domestic elk would spread diseases such as chronic wasting disease (CWD) through the wild elk population and that the escapees were actually red deer/elk hybrids and would pollute the wild elk gene pool. The furor has died down in recent weeks, but the rest of the story hasn’t been written yet.
After my last column, I received a comment from Kristy who wasn’t too happy about how this affair was reported. She wrote: . “Please note that the majority of the 36 tests results are back, and every one is negative for TB, brucellosis and CWD. And yes they are pure elk. BIG SURPRISE!”
Kristy pointed me to the official website of the Idaho Elk Breeder’s Association, www.thetruthaboutelk.org, which echoed her comments. Here’s what the elk breeders have on the website: “Our Industry as a whole has been victim to numerous false accusations, which have been printed in the local news media over the past few weeks. This particular situation is a perfect example of what happens when we have Overpowered & Overfunded Government Agencies who use their political agendas to attack Private Industry. It is our job to provide our fellow Idahoans with factual information and arguments in regards to the domestic elk industry here in Idaho. The majority of the 36 ‘escapee’ animals have already been tested and were negative for disease and were found to be PURE ELK. The ISDA (Idaho Ag. Dept.) has also tested the rest of the animals, which were not slaughtered by state officials, and they too are negative for disease.”
Agreeing that a few facts might smooth over a lot of paranoia, I almost posted the foregoing, but one word stopped me, “majority.” So, I contacted Wayne Hoffman at the Idaho Department of Agriculture, the agency in charge of the testing (not the Fish and Game Department as many believe). “As I understand it, all disease testing came back negative,” Hoffman explained. “We do have three genetic tests that are inconclusive and are being retested.”
That’s another scary word, “inconclusive,” so I called Hoffman this morning, and he confirmed that three samples came back positive for red deer. Thinking these could be false positives, his department decided to re-test these three samples, and it will be another week at least before they come back.
Hoffman did not seem concerned about a few red deer genes showing up in the tests, speculating that the tests might be inaccurate. “It’s my understanding that these false positives happen,” he said.
So, should we be alarmed that three of 36 tests came back showing that somewhere in the past these elk piced up some red deer genes? Or is this good enough to put the fear behind us?
Footnote: After I posted this article earlier today, Wayne Hoffman called to give me more information on what “inconclusive” meant and why his department wasn’t as concerned as some people might think they should be.
He explained that it’s standard policy for all domestic elk imported into the state, including Rammell’s elk, to be tested for genetic purity before they’re allowed in the state. “We have certificates showing that these elk were tested for red deer impurities,” Hoffman notes. “That’s why we aren’t that excited (about the three red deer positives) because we’ve already tested these elk before they escaped. We already have evidence that they are pure Rocky Mountain elk so that makes the tests inconclusive. We have two competing test results, and they both can’t be true.”
I asked what might happen if the re-tests also showed positive for red deer, and Hoffman said right now they wanted to deal with one thing at a time.
I guess there would be two obvious answers: Either Rammell had some elk that weren’t tested and imported legally or the original tests were incorrect. Stay tuned.
Footnote No. 2: I talked to Wayne Hoffman again, and he has just now learned that the three positive tests for red deer markers came from the same elk. The testing process requires three samples for each elk, and in this case, two out of the three samples, from the same elk, came back positive and are being re-tested. Earlier in this article, it was assumed that three positive tests meant three elk, but not so. Only one elk. Stay tuned.
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Comments
What did they think we thought they were? Half elk, half dingo?
Looking forward to more updates.
Technically speaking, although "red deer" and the "wapiti" are considered by many to the same species because they can interbreed, there is a very good argument, posed by Canadian biologist Valerius Geist, who is the premier ungulate biologist in the world, that they should be considered different species because of their long time geographic separation and consequently their differently evolved adaptations to different environments. I find this argument compelling. Although the ancestor of the red deer and the wapiti came out of south Asia, apparently, their respective subsequent ancestors adapted to entirely different ecotypes, the red deer, the forested areas of Europe, and the wapiti, the open plains of northeast Asia, Berengia, and North America. There are numerous differences between red deer and wapiti, for example, the roar of the red deer, adapted to more forested or vegetated terrain, and the bugle of the wapiti, adapted to more open areas. The difference between the roar and the bugle--how they are formed and the frequency of the sounds--allow each to be heard more easily in each ecotype.
In case you were wondering, one reason the wapiti has adapted in North America to mountains and forests as well as plains is that it had no competitors to occupation of those areas after it migrated to North America after the great continental glaciers opened up at the end of the Pleistocene. So the claim that you often hear that "the elk is a plains animal and not native to mountains and forests" is not exactly accurate, although there is some truth to it.
There is no scientific evidence that red deer-wapiti hybrids are more "vigorous" than purebreds of either species. That is a conceit of the alternative livestock industry. The biological differences, which are greater than just the differences between the roar and the bugle, between the two that have evolved over several million years since separating from each other have become significant enough that crossbreeds would do less well in their respective wild environments if left to their own devices.
Another aspect of the elk breeding industry that raises problems for wildlife ecologists and managers is that the industry, as does any agricultural enterprise, breeds and manages its animals to produce a specific commodity, say, antlers for hunters or meat or velvet for a particular consumer market. Domesticating the animal to produce commodities affects the overall fitness of the animals to function in wild environments by focusing on one or two aspects of the animal rather than the whole animal.
In either case, we have unfit animals because human directed artificial selection has been subsituted for natural selection, which operates randomly and holistically.
Robert
Any defects would not be revealed in New Zealand since neither the red deer nor the wapiti are native to that country, since there are no native predators, and because they are intensively game ranched as a kind of livestock; they are not at the mercy of nature in New Zealand. The test would be to implant the hybrid into a place like Yellowstone, which is mostly natural, and see what happens.
The problem of fitness of a hybrid is inseparable from the problem of domestication, which I discussed above, and it is likely that the latter is more important. Ecology is also important, and we have to acknowledge that the ecology of pastoralism and agriculture is very different from the ecology of wildlands. In a managed landscape, selective forces are human directed to varying degrees for specific human purposes. In a truly wild landscape, selective forces are random and have no purpose; an animal has to respond to a whole suit of selective factors. It is logical to conclude that natural selection selects for survivability, whereas artifical selection selects only for a commodity, while survivability comes from human management. In other words, domestic animals depend upon a kind of welfare to survive. The problem is, of course, when that welfare is withdrawn and the animal is thrust wholly back upon its own resources. Turn a herd of sheep out on its own in the moutains and see what happens.
That is why those of us with a passion for wildness work so hard to protect and expand, so much as is possible in a human dominated planet, wilderness. It's a matter of survival.
In domestication, the first thing that humans attempt to breed out of an animal is its wildness, and it is the wildness of an animal that is the foundation of its survivability apart from humans. That's one reason that "wild" horses are so problematic, for example. The mustang of North America is the descendent of domestic stock, yet on its own it has reverted behaviorially to a kind of wildness and survived, largely in the absence of effective predators, however, which is an important factor that must be reiterated time after time. (Predators are a vital force in natural selection, and a terror for those who see some benefit to artificial selection). In some cases, such as with the mustangs of the Pryor Mountains in northern Wyoming, we are starting to see a reversion in appearance of the mustang to ancient wild horses. The process does go both ways.
As the "owner" of two mustangs--one doesn't own mustangs, I have discovered, except in a rather weak legal sense--I have come to understand why it is so difficult to get the wild horse adoption program going. One has to have a basic respect for wild things and wildness, or you'll never get anywhere with a mustang, either on its back or on the ground. (I promise you you'll spend a lot of time on the ground). Too many horseowners want a tractable horse. The issue is respect for wildness and an acceptance of wildness as good in and of itself.
In the end I think that the question of hybrids and game ranching ultimately comes down to whether one respects wildness or not, and understands that wildness is the only thing that ensures survivability in the long run. Civilized people, by and large, do not respect wildness and they also fear it. We have been living on welfare under civilization for so long that we are scared stiff by what would happen should civilization fail--as it has done repeatedly over the last five or six thousand years or so, and as it will continue to fail.
In other words, to work against the domestication of wild animals and to work for the protection of wildlands are ways to work toward what counts for survival, and what doesn't, both for wildlife and for ourselves.
Robert
>>>>>>
Since then, state Department of Agriculture employees have tested more than 90 of Rammell's animals, including about 36 shot after their flight and 60 live animals from Rammell's enclosure now in quarantine, spokesman Wayne Hoffman said. Hoffman cautioned against jumping to conclusions on the lone test, due to frequent occurrences of false positives and because the elk in question came to Idaho from another state in 1997 with a certificate vouching for its genetic purity.
"The fact that only one elk tested positive, and the fact that we have certification that it's already been tested free of red deer, should cause anyone to go back and reverify," said Hoffman, whose agency regulates Idaho's game farms. "There are a lot of clues here that give us pause."
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Since there is no CWD in these elk, and, in fact, no elk may contain red deer genes as per the previous testing and certification, what apology and reparations is Dr. Rammell due for merely exercizing a "go to hell" libertarian attitude towards government interference in his private business?
The Idaho Elk Breeders Assn. has a message board at http://www.thetruthaboutelk.org/page/page/3926314.htm
Let them know what you think.