Packgoats banned in Alaska!!

Knowing exactly what is going on NOW is important to being able to respond correctly and have a positive effect on this serious challenge to packing with goats.

Is it really about disease, unfair hunting advantage, or possibly competition or bad feeling with someone, etc.?

I spent a little time trying to find something out on Google but did not meet with much success.

Here is a link to the general topic from over 4 years ago on our form.

viewtopic.php?f=16&t=15&p=295&hilit=John+Mionczynski#p295

Bottom line let's get our ducks in a roll and make a rational response to this problem, and to the right people, in the right way to help not hurt our position...
I am new to all this and only trying to get all the facts.
Any information would be appreciated.

Joe

From Fish Wildlife and Parks in Montana:


It is generally agreed by folks who study BHS pneumonia that domestic (or feral) goats as well as domestic sheep can serve as a reservoir for bacteria that can be pathogenic for BHS. I know there is a paper in Journal of Wildlife Diseases in which they looked at a group of feral goats living in BHS habitat in Hells Canyon, and they were able to find leukotoxin positive Mannheimia haemolytica in both goats and BHS…..as you know there was a big pneumonia outbreak there. It isn’t possible from this study to say which way the transmission occurred (BHS to goats, or goats to BHS), but it does show that goats can carry some of the same organisms that domestic sheep can carry, and that can kill BHS. When goats are in BHS habitat it is important to manage them in a way to maintain separation. There is also the policy that BHS that are known to come into contact with domestics be removed from the herd. Most studies have been done with domestic sheep, but we know that goats can carry these same potential pathogens, so the same precautions really apply.







Jennifer M. Ramsey D.V.M., M.P.V.M.

Wildlife Veterinarian

Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks

Office: (406) 994-5671

Mobile: (406) 581-3691

StykbowMT225 said:

From Fish Wildlife and Parks in Montana:

It is generally agreed by folks who study BHS pneumonia that domestic (or feral) goats as well as domestic sheep can serve as a reservoir for bacteria that can be pathogenic for BHS. I know there is a paper in Journal of Wildlife Diseases in which they looked at a group of feral goats living in BHS habitat in Hells Canyon, and they were able to find leukotoxin positive Mannheimia haemolytica in both goats and BHS…..as you know there was a big pneumonia outbreak there. It isn’t possible from this study to say which way the transmission occurred (BHS to goats, or goats to BHS), but it does show that goats can carry some of the same organisms that domestic sheep can carry, and that can kill BHS. When goats are in BHS habitat it is important to manage them in a way to maintain separation. There is also the policy that BHS that are known to come into contact with domestics be removed from the herd. Most studies have been done with domestic sheep, but we know that goats can carry these same potential pathogens, so the same precautions really apply.

Jennifer M. Ramsey D.V.M., M.P.V.M.

Wildlife Veterinarian

Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks

Office: (406) 994-5671

Mobile: (406) 581-3691

Click to expand...

I need to chime in on this.

Regarding the Hells Canyon Die-off, I will quote from a Journal of Wildlife Disease paper, which is peer -reviewed. "Sharing of Pasturella spp. Between Free Ranging Bighorn Sheep and Feral Goats". On p. 898, it states that a feral goat was found with a Bighorn Ram and a Ewe. The ram and goat were clinically healthy, but the ewe showed signs of respiratory disease. This causes me to wonder..if goats are as dangerous as domestic sheep (studies have not faired well with domestic sheep and bighorn sheep), then WHY was the Bighorn Ram clinically healthy?

Same page - 20 bighorn sheep were found 30 km away that were either sick or dead. (more on this in a minute).

On p. 901 of the same document, it says,"...because both the biovariant 1 (Pasturella Haemolytica) and ToxA + organisms were limited TO THE THREE ANIMALS shot on 29 November 1995 and were NOT isolated from ANY of the other bighorn sheep in groups A and B, there is NO evidence that those organisms were associated with subsequent disease or deaths." This is factual information. I do believe that there has been fiction mixed with facts in order to condemn goats, by certain biologists with an agenda.

So here is what I read...you own a pistol. You live in Great Falls, MT. A guy dies of a shotgun blast in Billings, MT but I am blaming you because you own a gun. Make sense?

NAPgA agrees with strict management of packgoats. But banning them from the forest makes as much sense as banning guns in order to eliminate murders in a particular State.

There is only one study I know of where domestic goats are commingled with Bighorn Sheep in a controlled environment. It is a study by Dr. Wm Foreyt in 1994. Domestic Goats were pastured with Bighorn Sheep for a period of time, and at the end of the study BOTH GOATS AND BIGHORN SHEEP WERE HEALTHY.

All of the scientists that I have spoken with on this subject over the phone have told me that there is insufficient data to say that goats are bighorn sheep killers. There is no peer reviewed scientific evidence "out there".

Banning is not the answer. Banning will not keep the "rogue" goat packers out. NAPgA does suggest management and education for the goat packing community.

Yes, this is a very serious issue. Frankly, if I am traveling through Bighorn Sheep habitat with my goats, I would do it quickly, I would have a GPS collar on my goats, I would only pack one or two goats maximum and travel light, and I would highline my goats. And if I see any bighorn sheep, I would do my darndest to scare them away.

NAPgA could use the help on fighting these closures by helping us fund our legal fees. We need help in a big way, financially. We have hired the best attorney that we could find, but that comes at a price.

Charlie Jennings, Land Use Chairman
NAPgA
[email protected]

This also cam in from Justin Gude. I have questions in to MT FWP to see what kind of test/vaccinations/disease free status possibilities we can come up with.

Thanks,
Doug


"It looks as though there is a level of risk for wild sheep associated with domestic goats, to the point of a desire to maintain separation. If you are out with the goats and contact sheep, then we’d like to know and probably would plan to remove the sheep (if we can determine what sheep had the contact)."



Justin Gude
Wildlife Research & Technical Services Section Manager
Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks
1420 E. 6th Ave.

And again from my local Region 4 Biologist:

Hi Doug,



There is a wealth of information out there concerning disease transmission in bighorn sheep, and although most of it is focused on domestic sheep, domestic goats have been known to carry types of Pasteurella spp. (a cause of respiratory disease) and have been implicated in several pneumonia die-offs of bighorn sheep. They are also known to carry and transmit parasites. Our Montana Bighorn Sheep Conservation Strategy suggests that FWP has tried to establish a buffer of at least 9 miles between domestic goat/sheep and bighorn populations, which hasn’t been completely successful.



Most of these pathogens are transmitted by nose-to-nose contact. If you are planning on hunting the Breaks, which is basically the only sheep population in the state that hasn’t experienced a disease-related die-off in recent years, I would personally rather see you leaving the goats at home. I don’t know of any regulation against using pack goats and doubt that there is a “disease-free†status you could obtain from them. However, if you do bring them, I strongly recommend having COMPLETE control over them the entire time (on the trail and at camp) and driving away any bighorn sheep that come near them. If contact occurs, let us know as we would have to remove that animal from the herd.



Also, pack goats are banned in NM in alpine habitats (e.g., Pecos Wilderness) and NMGF is also working to prohibit their use in lower elevation areas as well.



Anyway, I hope this helps

Ok,

The "blue" she is referring to isn't on the copied and pasted portion below. If a moderator care edit the piece, it looks reasonably easy to distinguish between her responses and Charlie's. Some good information none the less, but I will still not settle for the "stay away" approach in the future. The reason I own pack goats is for going into the backcountry. Someday I will draw a sheep tag and I plan on using them. This isn't acceptable to me. I hope we can work together and end the bans, and prevent new ones from occuring.

Thanks
Doug

Hi Doug â€" I’ve tried to respond to some of the writing below (in blue) so let me know if any of my responses need further clarification. As far as testing clean goes, there isn’t anything wrong with testing animals to get some idea of what bacteria they’re carrying, but its not foolproof. As I mention below, if you detect a particular bacteria, you know without doubt that it is present in the sample. If you do not find a bacteria, that doesn’t guarantee that the animal is not carrying it. You could just not get a good sample with your swab, the bacteria could die during storage and shipping to the lab, there is potential for human error in the lab, and some bacteria are just hard to grow in a lab. When we collect samples from bhs herds during capture, we sample a lot of animals, and always assume we’re not finding every bacteria in every animal. By sampling a large number of animals, we can have a bit more certainty that if a bacteria is present in the herd, we’ll pick it up at least in some of the samples, but not all.

Scientists are working right now on a vaccine for domestic sheep that they hope will show some promise in protecting bhs from certain pneumonias, but it will be a while before we know whether that is going to work out. I honestly don’t know whether it will also be tested in goats. There are also scientists still working on a vaccine for bhs directly, but its probably years from being a real option. Vaccines that have been used for bhs in the past haven’t really been very effective.

Because some domestic sheep can carry bacteria that may be harmful to bhs as a normal part of the flora of their upper respiratory tract, they don’t necessarily get sick. (There are some strains of these bacteria that can make domestic livestock sick, which is why these vaccines exist). There are vaccines for some pasteurella/mannheimia organisms, but in many cases they aren’t necessarily going to keep a domestic sheep from carrying the specific biotype of that bacteria that can make bhs sick. Also, if the domestic sheep is already a carrier, the vaccination isn’t going to get rid of the bacteria they are carrying. I’m not super familiar with the domestic sheep pneumonia vaccines, but some vaccines don’t necessarily prevent the from carrying a bacteria, but does prevent them from developing the disease caused by that bacteria (sometimes you’ll see wording on the label that says something like “for the prevention of pneumonia due to x bacteria†not necessarily “to prevent infection with x bacteriaâ€.

Unfortunately there really hasn’t been a lot of work done with goats and bhs. We do know that they can at least carry some of these bacteria that are capable of making bhs sick, so the safest option for the bhs is to maintain separation.

Jennifer M. Ramsey D.V.M., M.P.V.M.

Wildlife Veterinarian

Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks

Office: (406) 994-5671

Mobile: (406) 581-3691

From: Doug Krings [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Thursday, March 08, 2012 10:09 AM
To: Ramsey, Jennifer
Subject: Pack goats in MT/AK

Jennifer,

I recieved this as a response on a forum discussing the possible solutions to pack goats and BHS/DS/SS/DBS habitat. Please let me know if it has any merit.

"I need to chime in on this.

Regarding the Hells Canyon Die-off, I will quote from a Journal of Wildlife Disease paper, which is peer -reviewed. "Sharing of Pasturella spp. Between Free Ranging Bighorn Sheep and Feral Goats". On p. 898, it states that a feral goat was found with a Bighorn Ram and a Ewe. The ram and goat were clinically healthy, but the ewe showed signs of respiratory disease. This causes me to wonder..if goats are as dangerous as domestic sheep (studies have not faired well with domestic sheep and bighorn sheep), then WHY was the Bighorn Ram clinically healthy?

It’s hard to say for sure Doug, but there are a few different possibilities. Just as when different humans are exposed to a sick individual and some get sick and some don’t, different animals may have different levels of resistance, which may affect their ability to fend off pathogens. This could be affected by a lot of things like stress, nutrition, age, etc. They killed all three animals, and isolated P. haemolytica (now called M. haemolytica) from the goat and the ewe but not the ram. Another thing to keep in mind with bacterial culture is that if you don’t get it to grow, that doesn’t guarantee it’s not there. There are many factors that can cause failure of a lab to isolate a bacteria….from sampling technique, to sample storage, to human error at the lab and so on. If you isolate a bacteria from a sample, then you know without doubt that it was present in the sample. If you fail to isolate the bacteria, either it wasn’t present, or for some reason it was there and you were unable to isolate it. So, the ram could have in fact not been infected with P haemolytica and perhaps it hadn’t been long enough for him to actually have symptoms, or there could have been a failure to detect it. Why one sheep is infected and another in a group is not is something that is really hard to know. It’s stated in this paper that although they can document sharing of bacteria between bhs and the goats, it is impossible to prove the direction of the transmission. To do that they would have had to know what bacteria these animals were carrying prior to the their comingling.

Same page - 20 bighorn sheep were found 30 km away that were either sick or dead. (more on this in a minute).

On p. 901 of the same document, it says,"...because both the biovariant 1 (Pasturella Haemolytica) and ToxA + organisms were limited TO THE THREE ANIMALS shot on 29 November 1995 and were NOT isolated from ANY of the other bighorn sheep in groups A and B, there is NO evidence that those organisms were associated with subsequent disease or deaths." This is factual information. I do believe that there has been fiction mixed with facts in order to condemn goats, by certain biologists with an agenda.

I think you have to be careful not to take more from this Hells Canyon paper than what is really there. I think really the aim of the paper was to make the point that goats are capable of carrying these same bacteria that may cause disease in BHS. I think they were pretty careful to not say that these sheep got the bacteria from the goats….they don’t have what they need to do that. So, the fact that the biovariant 1 and ToxA + organisms were only isolated from the 3 animals they shot initially is an interesting point, but doesn’t falsify the statement that goats are capable of carrying these organisms. They didn’t go on to say that the goats were the source of pathogens that caused pneumonia in all these sheep.

So here is what I read...you own a pistol. You live in Great Falls, MT. A guy dies of a shotgun blast in Billings, MT but I am blaming you because you own a gun. Make sense?

NAPgA agrees with strict management of packgoats. But banning them from the forest makes as much sense as banning guns in order to eliminate murders in a particular State.

There is only one study I know of where domestic goats are commingled with Bighorn Sheep in a controlled environment. It is a study by Dr. Wm Foreyt in 1994. Domestic Goats were pastured with Bighorn Sheep for a period of time, and at the end of the study BOTH GOATS AND BIGHORN SHEEP WERE HEALTHY.

This is somewhat true…Dr. Foreyt did do this study, and the bhs survived their exposure to the domestic goats. However, in the management recommendations section of his paper, he says that the study with domestic goats didn’t result in disease in bhs, but he didn’t go so far as to say that bhs contact with domestic goats does not result in respiratory disease. In fact, he suggests the same type of study “needs to be conducted using domestic goats that are carrying P. haemolytica biotype A to determine the effects of those organisms on the health of bhsâ€. This type of P haemolytica, which is thought to be the worst one for bhs, was not detected in any goats at the end of the study….so, there is the possibility that these goats simply weren’t carriers of this potential pathogen, so the bhs didn’t get sick. If they did the study with goats known to be carrying this bacteria, there is a possibility that there would have been a different outcome. We know that domestic sheep and goats (from the Hell’s Canyon paper) can carry some of these bacteria without getting sick.

All of the scientists that I have spoken with on this subject over the phone have told me that there is insufficient data to say that goats are bighorn sheep killers. There is no peer reviewed scientific evidence "out there".

Banning is not the answer. Banning will not keep the "rogue" goat packers out. NAPgA does suggest management and education for the goat packing community.

Yes, this is a very serious issue. Frankly, if I am traveling through Bighorn Sheep habitat with my goats, I would do it quickly, I would have a GPS collar on my goats, I would only pack one or two goats maximum and travel light, and I would highline my goats. And if I see any bighorn sheep, I would do my darndest to scare them away.

NAPgA could use the help on fighting these closures by helping us fund our legal fees. We need help in a big way, financially. We have hired the best attorney that we could find, but that comes at a price.

Charlie Jennings, Land Use Chairman
NAPgA"

Many times I have read from various Game and Fish documents that have stated, there is an overwhelming amount of evidence" that domestic sheep and goats transmit diseases to bighorn sheep.

They quote the Hells Canyon die offs, they refer to die offs in Arizona, etc.

So if I seem like I am over-reacting...it is because there have been biologists that have taken it upon themselves to stretch the truth.

The problems in Arizona came from weed eating brush goats that were poorly managed. Not well cared for Packgoats.

Goats have been blamed for catastrophic die offs in the Hells Canyon area...not what the facts say. So yeah, I am somewhat peeved because that is not based on factual information.

I have also heard that goats can carry pink-eye...well, horses and cattle and humans do also. If my goats have pink-eye, I am certainly not going to take them into Bighorn Sheep areas.

I agree with spacial separation between goats and Bighorn Sheep...through effective management and control, not banning them.

Finally, if my opinions are going to be copied and shared with Various biologists and veterinarians, would you please be courteous enough to ask my permission first? I feel that it is just common courtesy to do that.

"They didn’t go on to say that the goats were the source of pathogens that caused pneumonia in all these sheep."

All that I will say personally, and not as a representative for NAPgA, is that statement sounds like back-peddling to me. I have read many, many documents where G & F employees, Bighorn Sheep Technical Committees, Biologists that do not like domestic goats and want them banned, etc., etc., blame domestic goats for the Hells Canyon die-offs.

This is what I want the goatpacking community to understand, is that the finer details of the scientific peer-reviewed documents, there are three of them in particular, that carefully examine the die-offs in the mid-90's in Hells Canyon, and reveal the truth. Once I started digging, I realized that there was more to the story than the opinions I was reading.

I agree that if we can nasal swab our goats and find out if whether or not they are carrying biovariant type A, than that is a critical thing to document in a health certificate and can be implemented in our Best Management Practices (BMP) plan. But that is going to take some time.

Dr. Knowles of the USDA at Washington State University informed us that ruminents can be swabbed and then the culture can be tested for lukotoxins. I sent a swab, performed by my local veterinarian, in to the WADDL lab last summer and it came back negative. But we still have to refine the process before the USFS will accept it.

For now, it is my own personal opinion, as mentioned earlier, that we exercise the most extreme caution (have COMPLETE control) and use LNT ethics when using our packgoats. I would hope that the whole packgoat community become very knowledgable about these diseases, work closely with your local Forest Service Rangers and Biologists and develop a healthy relationship with them, do volunteer trail work for the National Forests as many of us have, so that we can be regarded as an asset to the National Forests and not a liability.

Forgive me if I seem a little "testy" on this issue. As the Land Use Committee Chair for NAPgA, I have taken time off work (and when I don't work, I don't get paid) and driven 600 miles each way to Cody, Wyoming, once in a blinding snow-storm, to meet with the Forest Service on behalf of the goat-packing community. i have spent numerous hours combing over papers, trying to comprehend this science. I have an engineering background, so this is a new ball game for me.

I am frustrated that nobody is willing to allow us to enforce strict management practices and still allow access to all districts of the Shoshone National Forest. It has been closed (temporarily) until December 2013. The Forest Plan is current being revised and we are doing all that we can to help them understand that management of our packgoats is the correct way of thinking, not banning them.. Banning seems so "over the top" to me. So fanatical. That is just my opinion. I really believe that if I am allowed to take only two goats in where I want, that I can keep them from commingling with Bighorn Sheep. Doesn't seem that complicated to me. Yes, I worry about the domestic sheep herds and the thousands of weed-eating brush goats....but that ain't us. And I don't want to be painted with the same brush as those guys.