The effort to stamp out bovine tuberculosis in Manitoba will be broadened this year because of the discovery of an infected bull elk in the province’s Duck Mountain region.
The infected animal was found during a surveillance program this past fall and winter of wild elk and deer in the Riding Mountain and Duck Mountain areas of western Manitoba.
The young bull elk was bearing a radio collar, so officials were able to confirm it had strayed from the Riding Mountain National Park. It was one of three collared elk that were known to have roamed away from the park.
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“This is the first positive tuberculosis case outside of the Riding Mountain eradication area,” said Allan Preston, acting assistant deputy minister for Manitoba Agriculture.
“That’s a wee bit of a cause for concern, but because this was a collared elk and we know where he came from, we’re making the leap of faith, the assumption, that he was infected before he ever left the park.”
Riding Mountain and Duck Mountain are less than 50 kilometres apart.
Until now, efforts to eradicate bovine TB have concentrated around Riding Mountain, where the disease seemed to be concentrated.
Preston said officials will now look more aggressively at surveying cattle herds and wild elk and white-tailed deer on the east side of the Duck Mountains.
There is a risk the roaming bull elk could have spread the disease to animals beyond the Riding Mountain area, although the likelihood is low because bovine TB is not terribly infectious, Preston said.
If more cases of TB are found in the Duck Mountain area, particularly in cattle, added measures will be considered to limit the risk of the disease spreading. Those measures would include barrier fencing and intercept feeding to deter elk and deer from entering places where cattle overwinter.
“At this point, we haven’t seen any tuberculosis in cattle (around Duck Mountain), so we’re not rushing to that conclusion,” Preston said.
More than 150 elk samples were taken around the two parks during last fall and winter’s surveillance program. Almost 1,000 white-tailed deer samples were also collected.
Besides the infected bull elk, there were two confirmed cases in deer, but both were in the southern part of the Rural Municipality of Grandview near Riding Mountain.
According to Manitoba Conservation, the findings suggest there is a low presence of the disease in wildlife.
Meanwhile, two years have passed since the last confirmed case of bovine TB in a cattle herd near Riding Mountain.
Bill Finney, a director with the Manitoba Cattle Producers Association and chair of the association’s animal health committee, said he applauds the increased efforts to find the disease in wild elk and deer.
“At least we’re finding out now where the problems are.”
He believes more should be done to stamp out the disease in the wild animal population, although he said it is difficult to know what the best measures might be.
“We just seem to be taking too much time getting to the root of the problem, which more and more looks to be the west end of Riding Mountain National Park, where the cases keep showing up.”
Part of the frustration for cattle producers is that finding infected elk or deer can also result in testing local cattle herds. Some producers have had their herds tested as many as six times in the past eight years, Finney added. “We’re testing all these cattle year after year. It’s almost like we’re doing surveillance on the species that we now have proved free of TB, almost, and we’re not doing enough on the species that are the problem.”
Producers have to commit time and labour to assemble their cattle for testing at the request of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. The testing means added stress for the cattle and at times has resulted in abortions.
Finney said the federal government has not agreed to compensate producers for the added costs.
“If you’re going to continue to subject the cattle producers to ongoing testing, with really no end in sight, start paying them. Recognize their contribution.”
The ability to control the disease will influence how the U.S. Department of Agriculture views the risk of importing sexually intact cattle from Manitoba, although that point may seem moot at the moment because the border remains closed to imports of all Canadian cattle because of BSE.
