By KRISTA FOSS


Friday, August 2, 2002 – Print Edition, Page A4

Some Saskatchewan elk breeders may release their herds into the wild rather than watch their animals starve to death even if doing so spreads chronic wasting disease and creates an ecological mess, say members of the beleaguered industry.

Fears of chronic wasting disease have already devastated the elk producers' global market for antler velvet and persuaded many provincial abbatoirs to refuse to slaughter their animals for the commercial meat market.

Now grasshoppers and heat have wiped out pastures in the drought-scorched belt of Saskatchewan where the majority of the province's 28,000 farmed elk are located. Producers are spending several hundred dollars a day on hay or other nutrients.

And some are questioning whether they should spend themselves into a hole for animals they can't sell.

"We don't have the options the cattle farmers do," said Bob Kirkpatrick, president of the Saskatchewan Elk Breeders' Association, which represents the province's 400 producers. "We can't put an electric fence around a field and let them graze. We can't move our animals to areas that have grass because of regulations. We can't take them to slaughter."

Mr. Kirkpatrick, himself an elk breeder, said he doesn't condone farmers who threaten to simply to open their regulation 2.4-metre-high fences and let their elk free. "But these guys don't want to watch their animals starve to death in front of them. . . . I wouldn't call their bluff."

Letting the farmed elk, many originally imported from Montana and New Mexico, go free is illegal. According to retired Canadian Wildlife research scientist Nick Novakowski, it is also an ecological disaster in the making because of the threat chronic wasting disease poses to wild game, and to the province's hunting industry.

Chronic wasting disease affects animals from the cervid family such as elk, moose and deer. It is similar to so-called mad-cow disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans because the fatal disease eats away at the brain. It can't be detected in live animals, however.

In Saskatchewan, every dead or slaughtered elk is tested for the disease, and a positive result means the herd the animal originated from is destroyed. So far, 8,000 farmed elk have been killed in Saskatchewan because of CWD.

The situation for remaining producers is increasingly desperate.

Richard Smith, an elk producer in D'Arcy, 170 kilometres west of Saskatoon, just watched a cloud of grasshoppers consume the 800 acres of pasture he has for his 300 head of elk.

"There's nothing left but black dirt. You could see the grass leave," he said, adding that he is now spending $400 a day on hay to feed his elk. "You ask yourself, why would you feed something that has no marketable value?"

South Korea, which used to purchase most of the elk antler velvet produced in Saskatchewan, has now banned imports of the product from North America because of CWD. China, which stills buys from Saskatchewan producers, pays half of what they need to break even.

Meanwhile, the commercial elk-meat market is hampered by the lack of a federally inspected processing plant in Saskatchewan, and by the fact that other provinces' producers are prohibited from transporting elk across their boundaries.

"The government has got a week or two before something bad happens," Mr. Smith said. He said he won't release his elk but he suspects others will.

His maximum allotment from the $70-million aid program for livestock producers recently unveiled by the Saskatchewan's government will buy only enough hay to last him until Aug. 10, he said.

"For most, there's either two alternatives: Bury them or turn them loose," said Wilf Jurke of Lloydminster, who has 500 elk. "Look at the options: You face a $150 fine for turning them loose or a $5000 fine and jail time for letting them starve on your property. I don't think producers will wait for cover of darkness to let their animals go."