Some pretty wild claims there. Have any links to actual research? Most of what you are spewing is certainly not backed up by any reputable research I am aware
Some pretty wild claims there. Have any links to actual research? Most of what you are spewing is certainly not backed up by any reputable research I am aware of.
To Hunting Wife.
The topic at hand, do wolves, or lions too stave off CWD in elk, deer or even moose by culling those infected early, is like “scientific pot cooking on the stove” that is just now slowly coming to boil.
Science is slow because it is so exacting and demanding.
It is easy to be a nay-sayer. How long did tobacco companies deny the danger of smoking? How long did it take to prove the obvious? Even in the midst of smokers coughing and dying of cancer at rates far higher than non smokers. Big money was denying the obvious.
The only place in the United States where studies are capable of being done are in Yellowstone. And they are being done and the results continue to point that predators like wolves and lions are and have been forever the cleansing crew for CWD.
The incubation period for any and all CWD prion based diseases is frighteningly slow. Years, many years maybe a decade or more.
That is what makes prion diseases so dangerous. Dealing with them, especially when there is no cure at all, they just spread and get worse, would, should require great patience and caution.
We do have some huge models to guide us however.
Norway killed off all it’s wolves and it is now stuck forever with CWD. Sweden protected its wolves fully, has many of them, hundreds. And has no CWD even though it’s direct neighbor does have CWD.
The global models are blatantly obvious. I am not spewing wild ideas.
Idaho has no CWD and lots of wolves, which they are planning to kill off. Oregon and Washington have no CWD and some wolves, but not like Idaho.
You are a hunting wife. You do not have to actually see an elk to know one just walked across the road when you see elk tracks.
The tracks are proof that an elk was there.
“The Tracks” that smoking led to cancer were everywhere for decades. So are the “tracks” that predators like lions and wolves stave off CWD and have done so forever.
Yale Medical School did a huge study on Lymes Disease and other diseases and concluded that the consistent factor in disease emersion and spread was the lack of predators acting as the clean up crew.
The “Scientific Pot” of information supporting this is beginning to boil over.
Being a wife, maybe even a mother, when evidence was/is mounting, not just here but all over the world, that there was a threat to your child, that was lethal with no cure, would you ignore it and expose your child to it?
That is what CWD is like.
It is a “Terminator” of deer, elk and moose. When you study the devastation it is heart wrenching. Please recall I am both a biologist and hunter.
And if it jumps to people or cattle,,,and with time that is what all infectious agents are trying to do,
Well, the author Elliott said it best, “The world does not end in a bang, it ends with a whimper”
The possibility that predators choose prey selectively based on age or condition has been suggested but rarely tested. We examined whether mountain lions (Puma concolor) selectively prey upon mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) infected with chronic wasting ...
royalsocietypublishing.org
https://www.usgs.gov/centers/norock/science/, hundreschronic-wasting-disease?qt-science_center_objects=0#qt-science_center_objects
The possibility that predators choose prey selectively based on age or condition has been suggested but rarely tested. We examined whether mountain lions (Puma concolor) selectively prey upon mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus) infected with chronic wasting ...
royalsocietypublishing.org