Another subsidy to private Ag interests at the public expense.

Idaho Elk License Plate

Idaho Elk License Plate

Other states require testing of 100% of each private elk herd but the Idaho Legislature is requiring much less from Idaho’s elk growers and slipping money away from funds intended for the enhancement of wildlife. Idaho Senate Bill 1085 would require testing of “not more than twenty percent (20%) of testable animals” leaving elk, deer, moose, and other ungulates at risk of contracting chronic wasting disease, brucellosis or other diseases.

In Montana, citizens even passed an initiative making private elk operations illegal out of the well-founded fear that these operations would transmit chronic wasting disease to wild elk and deer.

S1085

Proceeds from elk license plates pay for testing private elk herds
Rocky Barker Voices.IdahoStatesman.com.

About The Author

Ken Cole

Ken Cole is a 5th generation Idahoan, an avid fly fisherman, wildlife enthusiast, and photographer. He is the interim Idaho Director for Western Watersheds Project. We do not accept unsolicited “guest” authors or advertising.

One Response to Plate buyers unknowingly paying to test private livestock so that they won’t infect public wildlife.

  1. SBH Clay says:

    I’d say the biggest “disease” is speciesism. That’s the selfish, arrogant attitude of humans who feel so superior to animals that they not only pretend to “need” to hunt wild elk (to keep the population in check and to continue the “fun” sport of gunning down the elk’s predators), but they contradict themselves by breeding wild animals in confined conditions, a practice both perverse and cruel. Given this depraved, violent mentality, it is no wonder that their “diseased” behavior shows up in the form of physical disease. Cease doing wrong, and the repercussions of wrongdoing cease.

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‎"At some point we must draw a line across the ground of our home and our being, drive a spear into the land and say to the bulldozers, earthmovers, government and corporations, “thus far and no further.” If we do not, we shall later feel, instead of pride, the regret of Thoreau, that good but overly-bookish man, who wrote, near the end of his life, “If I repent of anything it is likely to be my good behaviour."

~ Edward Abbey

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