IMPORTED INDIAN ANTELOPES ON THE FIRING LINE IN THE UNITED STATES

[Guest guest]

http://www.brownsvilleherald.com/ts_more.php?id=68770_0_10_0_C

Exotic antelope target of tick hunters

 

*USDA plans to put down a third of local nilgai, donate meat to homeless*

 

*BY KEVIN GARCIA

The Brownsville Herald*

 

January 8, 2006 — In his youth, Don Moore enjoyed sport hunting native and

exotic game.

 

In retirement, Moore enjoys the view of nature from his Boca Chica Beach

property.

 

" I used to hunt all the time, but I don't hunt anymore, " he said. " I'm a

little older, and I guess I feel a little more sympathy for the animals. "

 

The reformed hunter, now 62, has become the unlikely ally of an endangered

Indian antelope that roams the South Texas brush and is the target of

federal tick hunters.

 

The nilgai is a native of India that was transplanted here in the 1930s for

hunting. Several nilgai herds were brought to the King Ranch in Kenedy

County during that time and have since migrated to other areas of the state,

including the Rio Grande Valley borderlands.

 

Local wildlife officials estimate that there are between 20 and 50 nilgai

living near Boca Chica.

 

The U.S. Department of Agriculture plans to kill a third of the local nilgai

population sometime in the next several weeks. No specific date was

available Saturday.

 

The planned slaughter is part of an effort to control the spread of ticks

that plague area wildlife.

 

" Those particular animals came off the King (Ranch) just because of all the

pressure of looking for a place to hide, " Moore said. " Now, people are

bothering them here. "

 

The government is not targeting the horse-sized antelope, rather the ticks

they carry from Mexico as they travel, explained Roberta Duhaime, a USDA

tick epidemiologist.

 

The Cattle Fever Tick Eradication Program, part of the USDA's Animal and

Plant Health Inspection Service, began after livestock started dying in

large numbers while travelling between the north and south in the late

1800s.

 

Eventually, fever ticks were found to be the cause. An eradication program

in the early 20th century helped prevent large infestations.

 

To keep the tick population down, quarantine zones were established that

would stop the parasites from crossing into Texas from Mexico.

 

" One of those areas is Cameron County and the permanent quarantine zone

along the river, " Duhaime said. " Our guys patrol the area routinely on

horseback to look for stray animals, primarily livestock, from Mexico,

because Mexico is where we're getting the fever ticks from. "

 

After a 2005 tick infestation in Cameron County, researchers are even more

interested in stopping the parasites from entering the state.

 

" We haven't been able to definitively explain how they got the tick there, "

Duhaime said. " One of the issues could be wildlife carrying ticks. "

 

Because wildlife such as the native white-tailed deer and non-native nilgai

also pass through here, they are a concern for epidemiologists and a target

for the USDA.

 

" We're just starting to work a lot more with wildlife, " Duhaime said. " We

know there's a lot of animals that can carry the tick, but we don't know how

much. We found recently that whitetail can carry it. "

 

Even less is known about the nilgai's risk for carrying the ticks or how the

antelopes migrate across the state.

 

" In the past, they did look at a few nilgai, but as I understand it, they

only did a few tests and didn't find any, " Duhaime said. " What we want to do

now is take a statistical number so we can determine if that population has

any. "

 

Wildlife Services, another USDA division, will assist in the tick

eradication program by collecting nilgai in federal refuge land over the

next few weeks. Agents in helicopters plan to shoot down some of the

population for testing.

 

Meat from the slain animals will be donated to area homeless shelters.

 

" First of all, we don't really even know how many are there, " Duhaime said.

'What we're going to try to do is at least one third of what we can see. "

 

She added that non-lethal methods of sample collecting could be dangerous to

federal agents, as nilgai are large herd animals.

 

Nilgai are foreign to the Texas ecosystem, emphasized Jeff Rupert, refuge

manager for the Boca Chica Tract of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National

Wildlife Refuge

 

" That they are an exotic species is the most important point from the

perspective of a National Wildlife Refuge, " Rupert said. " That little

qualifier is a pretty important one for us. Our focus is solely on native

species. "

 

Native species, such as white-tailed deer, would be handled with more care,

and extreme measures would be taken for endangered species, like the ocelot.

 

Rupert added that eliminating the nilgai would be a boon to the refuge

system.

 

" We would see a tremendous benefit there in terms of reducing impact to the

habitat, " he said, explaining that they consume or trample more native

plants than other species in the area.

 

Boca Chica area residents and sport hunters expressed concern with the plan.

 

 

They say they enjoy watching nilgai pass through their lands, and hunters

explained that shooting multiple animals by helicopter would not allow for

proper meat preservation, spoiling any potential donations.

 

" Here, they just want to blast them all and give the meat away. That doesn't

make sense at all, " Moore said. " They can justify it anyway they want. "

 

He and other area residents agreed that if thinning the nilgai herd was the

goal, a hunting lottery could be created. The winner would have permission

to hunt a certain number of nilgai to help minimize the population and bring

back carcasses for scientific study.

 

" Texas is full of exotic imported species, " Moore said. " Texas' economy

wouldn't have made it for some ranches if not for that game. "

 

He added that if tick collection is the primary goal, non-lethal methods

could be used.

 

" Why don't we dart the animals? " he asked. " We are not in the Stone Ages

anymore. "

 

kgarcia