Energy

A Lethal Cattle Disease Beat Decades Ago Is Making An Alarming Comeback In South Texas

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Tim Pearce Energy Reporter
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Due to changes in the South Texas ecosystem over the past half century, a previously suppressed, lethal cattle disease is spreading again through ticks on wildlife.

The disease, commonly referred to as cattle fever, is lethal to about 90 percent of cattle bitten by an infected tick. The virus was largely eliminated from the United States by 1943, but has made a recent comeback, mostly in federally controlled wildlife refuges, according to the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association (TSCRA).

Ranches in the “quarantine zone,” about 1.4 million acres in South Texas bordering Mexico where the disease is active, abide by strict regulations to treat cattle and kill disease vectors, or infected ticks. Ranchers routinely run their herds through a pool of chemical that is harmless to the animals, but kills any ticks that might be attached to them.

The Laguna Atascosa and Lower Rio Grande Valley national wildlife refuges are located in the midst of the quarantine zone and harbor other carriers of the tick, such as nilgai antelope and white-tailed deer. On the refuge, the wildlife are not required to undergo the same treatments cattle do, nor would it be feasible to implement such as strategy for the wild animals. Instead, ticks feed and breed in the refuge, and when the wildlife drift out of the area onto surrounding ranches, the ticks travel with them.

Laguna Atascosa was created in 1946. Lower Rio Grande Valley was established in 1979 to protect and encourage biodiversity. Both are managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS). Cattle fever was eliminated in the U.S. largely because white-tailed deer and nilgai antelope, a species native to India and released in South Texas in the 1930s, were much less prevalent in the area then than they are today.

As wildlife populations grow and remain untreated, so do ticks. Ranches work with the FWS and Department of Agriculture (USDA) to fight the disease and have gained ground, but the TSCRA is pushing the FWS to change the way the refuges are managed in order to kill the virus in its breeding ground.

“The biggest concern that we have is that those ticks will be able to expand outside the quarantine zone,” TSCRA Director of Public Affairs Jeremy Fuchs told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

Outside the quarantine zone, cattle fever would kill 90 percent of “naïve” cattle that have not been exposed to the disease. An outbreak would have wide-ranging effects on the Texas cattle industry and, if cattle fever spreads far enough, on the entire U.S. beef market.

The FWS has changed some management practices within the refuges already, using prescribed burns to reduce vegetation where ticks hide and hunting overly-large wildlife populations, especially the non-native nilgai.

The TSCRA management proposal for the refuges involves putting out corn for wildlife that is laced with medication to kill ticks, but with negligible impact to the animals and environment. The ranchers’ association also wants the FWS to allow cattle grazing on the refuges.

“It sounds counterintuitive, why would you put cattle on this place where they can be infected?” Fuchs told TheDCNF. “The simple answer is, cattle are the preferred host for these ticks to get on to. When you put cattle in that refuge and they’re allowed to graze, they collect those ticks and, unlike the deer or the nilgai, you can round up those cattle and run them through a dipping vat and treat them.”

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