Food Chain Radio Show #1101

Michael Olson, Author & Urban Farming Agriculturalist

Wolves and Chronic Wasting Disease

This Poll is closed!!

Should wild animals be fed during winter?

No

Yes

*

100%

Guest: Marc Cooke, President Wolves of the Rockies

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is spreading throughout the deer and elk population of the West.

Michael Olson Food Chain Radio – Wolves Chronic Wasting Disease

Chronic Wasting Disease is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy similar to mad cow disease and scrapie in that it wastes the brain of the afflicted. Though no human has yet been identified as to having contracted CWD from an animal, the potential to do so has been demonstrated in an in vitro cell-free experiment.

Some say the vectors spreading CWD are the 16,000 elk being fed throughout the winter at Wyoming’s 22 feeding stations. They say CWD spreads rapidly throughout the closely confined feeding quarters, like Norovirus on a cruise ship.   In spring, the elk move out into the surrounding countryside, taking with them the CWD.

Can CWD be managed?

Marc Cooke, President of Wolves of the Rockies, claims that wolves are the perfect means to control the spread of CWD among elk, deer and moose. “And it doesn’t cost anything!” he told the Montana Fish and Wildlife Commission.

The thought that it may not cost anything leads us to ask….

Leave a comment below: Should wolves be freed to eat the weak and diseased?

Tune in here, for the syndicated Food Chain Radio Show #1101 May 6, 2017 Saturday 9AM Pacific 

Nationally syndicated Food Chain Radio airs live Saturday mornings 9-10AM Pacific.