Deer contraceptive fails

[Hamilton Reef]

Deer contraceptive fails in Jersey test

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-1/112701990998290.xml&coll=1

Sunday, September 18, 2005 BY BRIAN T. MURRAY Star-Ledger Staff

Brian Murray may be reached at (973) 392-4153 or bmurray@starledger.com.
The two dozen white-spotted fawns prancing around Princeton Township a few months ago were a signal something was wrong.

Their mothers were among 52 female deer injected last year with the birth control vaccine SpayVac, a drug expected to one day help manage wildlife populations.

But the fawns in Mercer County and another group in Ohio whose mothers also had been inoculated have put SpayVac on the shelf for good.

Along with it went the hopes for what wildlife biologists have sought for more than 20 years: an environmentally sound deer contraceptive that could be applied with one easy shot and last for years.

"It looked very promising, but now it's going to sit on a shelf and that's unfortunate," said Anthony DiNicola, a biologist and president of White Buffalo Inc., which was conducting the New Jersey experiment in conjunction with the state Division of Fish & Wildlife.

With white-tailed deer causing traffic collisions and devouring the countryside, biologists and wildlife education groups had hoped to supplement hunting efforts with a vaccine, particularly in suburban enclaves where hunters cannot tread. Today, there are an estimated 200,000 deer in New Jersey.

"It's (still) worth exploring because while hunting is the most effective tool, deer are now in urban corners where lethal control is not possible even for those outfits ... who use sharpshooters," said Larry Herrighty, head of the state's Bureau of Wildlife Management.

SpayVac seemed to be the answer and the state allowed a test program this year after an early version of the vaccine used at Penn State University three years ago showed promise. Despite regular mating, none of the test deer in that experiment has become pregnant.

The drug's failure in New Jersey and Ohio, according to company officials, resulted from a change in the manufacturing process needed to meet the federal Food and Drug Administration's sterilization standards.

"The vaccine was heated to higher temperatures than normal," explained Mark Fraker, president of SpayVac for Wildlife Inc. and TerraMar Environmental Research Ltd. of British Columbia, Canada.

The manufacturing change was a necessary and expected next step for SpayVac developers, who were venturing into the costly and lengthy process of seeking FDA approval so SpayVac could be pushed beyond the laboratory and into the public market.

That is not going to happen now.

ImmunoVaccine Technologies Inc. of Nova Scotia, which owns the patent and rights to manufacture SpayVac, has stopped funding the project.

"The main issue is that to take it further through the FDA process can cost $2 million to $3 million, even maybe $4 million," said Robert Brown, chief science officer at IVT. "We're a private company, and we were supporting the SpayVac program although it was at a loss. We don't see a future in getting it to the market. ... It's not commercially viable."

The failure left DiNicola and White Buffalo scrambling to round up the deer and apply another test vaccine that is known as GnRH. DiNicola was able to revaccinate 39 of the deer last month.

"He was already allowed to use GnRH on some of his deer in Princeton, so I authorized a change. The state has to be flexible with its research projects because of potential problems like this," Herrighty said.

It's too early to know if GnRH will be the silver bullet in deer birth control. But SpayVac's troubles have served as another reminder how difficult it is to develop a one-shot, long-lasting vaccine.

"The high costs of using birth control on wildlife are in the logistics of capturing and applying the vaccine," Herrighty said. "Those costs would be reduce drastically by a one-shot, long-lasting fertility program."

DiNicola, who would not put a price tag on the experiment, said he is looking ahead.

Although GnRH may last only two to four years, researchers hope to extend its effectiveness, he said. Its other advantage is that it prevents female deer from going into estrus, or heat, he added. That means the does are less likely to be hit by cars because male deer will not chase them in mating season.

"Where SpayVac was the leading vaccine, there is now GnRH. The tortoise is now in the lead," DiNicola said.

[Playin' Hooky]

Another "great" idea from the anti-hunting establishment falls flat on its face.
Guess we hunters will still have to pay for our shot at population control...

I've always wondered....

If animals have rights that animal rights activists are fighting so desperately to preserve, what makes them think that they can take away one of the most inalienable rights of all--the right to procreate?

What of the dissenting deer that says "Give me reproduction or give me death!" What do the animal rights groups do then? I can answer that one!

[Hamilton Reef]

Why deer hunts can be humane
They are regulated, safe and ethical — especially when compared with what some communities are doing to thin the number of nuisance deer.

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20051220/oplede20.art.htm

By Mary Zeiss Stange

At first, they are charming visitors. Sylphlike, whitetail deer amble into the backyard, cropping a dandelion here and a bit of clover there. Startled by your appearance on the deck, they gracefully bound over the fence. Thrilled, you feel fortunate to live this close to nature.

Years pass and these same adorable mega-faunas, growing in numbers and audacity, have taken on the aura of a plague. They trash flower beds, decimate vegetable gardens, denude deciduous trees and shrubs. Far from dashing away, they train those liquid brown eyes on you with a look you have come to associate with a cervid version of zombies. Life in the suburbs has become a war of attrition, and Bambi and his mom are winning.

It's a story being played out across the USA, in many major metropolitan areas. Deer are, by nature, browsers — they eat a broad range of fruits, flowers, grasses and greenery. Add to this the fact that they are highly adaptable, and the convergence of whitetail and humans' taste in landscaping is bound to become a problem.

To be fair, it probably started when the first homesteader who planted a garden wound up cussing the deer who helped themselves to the first pickings. The problem is becoming exacerbated by the suburban and ex-urban developments that are vastly encroaching upon whitetail habitat. Make no mistake: The deer are not “wandering into” these sprawling developments. They were there first. And, at this point, they have nowhere else to go.

Take the case of Ramsey County, Minn. In the Highwood neighborhood in St. Paul and South Maplewood to the east, according to St. Paul City Councilmember Kathy Lantry, deer are so numerous “they've become like rats,” and so destructive that one former resident remarked, “You can't plant anything. They eat it all.”

How to solve the problem? Hunting the rural fringes of the development has not sufficiently reduced whitetail numbers. Relocation doesn't work: It is costly and labor-intensive, many deer don't survive it, and the ones that do often simply become somebody else's headache.

Contraception is an option, although it too is expensive, and generally unreliable. Wildlife management officials in Princeton Township, N.J., were hopeful that they had turned the corner on their perennial deer problem last year, when they injected more than 50 does with SpayVac. Come springtime, with two dozen spotted fawns prancing about Princeton's avenues, they declared the experiment a “disappointment.” Some pilot studies, in places as far-flung as Houston and the New Jersey suburbs, have suggested somewhat more promise. But significant problems remain: What, for example, are the implications — ethical as well as ecological — of manipulating the gene pool?

Will the fact that inoculated does go into heat multiple times place impossible stress on the buck population, as well as precipitating even more deer-vehicle accidents? And there is the bottom line: Deer can live up to 15 years, so even successfully sterilized ones will be munching on the hollyhocks, and darting in and out of traffic, for the foreseeable future.

Ramsey County, along with a growing number of other municipalities, has decided to call in the heavy artillery, in the form of a team of sharpshooters to thin 200 does from the herd.

Tony DeNicola and his crew from White Buffalo Inc., a non-profit corporation based in Connecticut, are pros. In a relatively straightforward situation such as St. Paul, where whitetails tend to congregate in park areas, they shoot deer over bait with high-powered rifles from vehicles and tree stands. Fees range from $200-$350 per deer, depending on the project's difficulty. “I do this every day,” DeNicola has said. “For me, it's like brushing my teeth.”

In some less open spaces, White Buffalo opts for the “capture-and-kill” method, in which baited deer are trapped in nets and killed with a metal bolt administered at point blank range to the head. It's the same device used in slaughterhouses.

One need not be an animal rights activist to be appalled by this way of dealing with “nuisance deer.” Indeed, hunters have been among the most vocal critics. Neighboring hunters offered to help thin the herd at no taxpayer expense, but John Moriarty, Ramsey County's natural resource manager overseeing the cull in St. Paul and South Maplewood, rebuffed them: “There's no way you can have people with guns shooting deer in the city.”

But, actually, you can. All that skilled hunters need to do the job are access and homeowners' permission, and several metropolitan areas that have established “urban hunts” do provide both — among them are Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, and some counties around the Twin Cities.

Though most of these urban hunts involve archery rather than firearms, all have three things in common: They are highly regulated, and only very well-qualified hunters make the cut. As a result, they are very safe; there are no documented cases of injuries to non-hunters in any urban deer hunts. And they do work to bring down deer numbers — perhaps not quite so dramatically as a sharpshooting fest, but certainly more humanely, economically and ethically. The meat from these urban hunts generally goes to community food banks.

There is an additional advantage to urban hunts: It reminds the deer, and us, about our respective places in the scheme of things.

Urban hunts can help make deer more wary of coming into contact with human beings. They also remind the people that they are more than mere sightseers in the neighborhoods they and the deer both now call home.

Mary Zeiss Stange is the author of Woman the Hunter. She teaches at Skidmore College and is a member of USA TODAY's board of contributors.

[Hamilton Reef]

Deer contraceptive proves unreliable
Two-year study finds vaccine is not viable

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-7/1186635171266130.xml&coll=1

08/09/07 BY LAWRENCE RAGONESE Star-Ledger Staff
lragonese@starledger.com or (973) 539-7910

The search for the "magic bullet" contraceptive, a one-shot, long-lasting solution to the state's deer overpopulation woes, has once again eluded scientists, according to the latest study by a wildlife research team.

Biologist Anthony DiNicola's study of a captive herd at the Giralda Farms corporate center in Madison found that one of the latest immuno-contraceptives, called GonaCon, falls far short of being a viable vaccine. Had it worked, scientists say it would have been a godsend to towns with too many deer, and where hunting is difficult or impractical.

The two-year study of 51 adult deer at Giralda Farms showed the contraceptive to be just 70 percent effective after one year and 55 percent after two years, far less than the 90-plus percent effective rate needed to make its use feasible in some situations, DiNicola said in a report filed with federal and state environmental officials.

Those findings are similar to results of a companion federal study being conducted in Maryland, where GonaCon had an 88 percent success rate in year one, but only a 47 percent success rate after two years, according to researchers for the National Wildlife Research Center.

"We're looking hard for that single shot contraceptive we need. We've made great strides to reach the next level. The technology is getting us closer," said DiNicola, owner of Connecticut-based White Buffalo Inc., a wildlife management firm. "Unfortunately, right now, it's not a practical concept."

Why the need for one shot success?

Trying to capture, mark and inoculate free-range deer in the woods or suburban neighborhoods in the months before breeding season, and then finding the same deer again the next year to give them booster shots would be very difficult and very expensive.

"At this point, I'd say it's doable. But how much money do you have? The cost would be enormous," DiNicola said, estimating it would cost at least $1,000 per deer, an amount that would have to be paid again every few years, when the vaccines wore off.

He said he now charges $150 to $300 to dart or shoot each deer.

The lack of success of GonaCon is bad news for suburban towns like Millburn, Hanover and Scotch Plains that are overrun with deer but cannot easily or safely permit hunting in residential areas. It's also a blow to opponents of deer hunting, at places like Essex County's South Mountain Reservation, who have argued a long-lasting contraceptive, such as GonaCon, could be a good alternative to killing deer.

An overabundance of white-tailed deer have caused safety and environmental woes throughout much of New Jersey in recent years.

"High densities of deer have created near-emergency situations, causing deer-vehicle collisions resulting in death and injuries, ecological damage to native species of woodland flora, gardens and agricultural crops, as well as elevated risk of Lyme disease, all of which costs our citizens and farmers more than $50 million annually and places their health and safety at risk," the State League of Municipalities said in a 2006 resolution.

Hunting is the primary tool used to deal with deer overpopulation, said Larry Hajna, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Protection, which has received and reviewed DiNicola's report. So far, research shows contraception is not feasible for free-roaming deer herds, Hajna. said.

However, efforts to find a viable deer contraceptive are progressing.

The National Wildlife Research Center, an arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, in conjunction with DiNicola, has conducted studies in New Jersey and Maryland on the gonadotropin-releasing hormone, GnRH, commercially known as GonaCon.

GnRH is part of a pathway that signals the body to produce sex hormones, said Kathleen Fagerstone, the center's research manager. Without GnRH, very little estrogen, progesterone or testosterone is produced. The aim of a GnRH vaccine is to bind to or "tie up" the GnRH that's produced within an animal's body so it does not trigger reproduction.

DiNicola, a wildlife biologist, said it has not shown any long-lasting effect. Only with booster shots, given within the first year, have the desired results been obtained, he said.

The results of the USDA-funded GonaCon tests were discouraging to groups seeking more humane methods to deal with deer overpopulation.

"It's quite a disappointment," said Nina Austenberg, Mid-Atlantic Region director for the Humane Society of the United States. "But I believe it will happen soon. We will not stop working at it or looking for it, not ever."

DiNicola says he's continuing working to find a non-lethal product that can be used in combination with hunting and culling of white-tailed deer. His latest effort, which he is financing with $50,000 of his own money, is a study of a potential vaccine out of New Zealand.

"I'm exhausting the contraceptive arena," he said. "I think we'll eventually find something that works out there."

[November Sunrise]

The results of the USDA-funded GonaCon tests were discouraging to groups seeking more humane methods to deal with deer overpopulation.

"It's quite a disappointment," said Nina Austenberg, Mid-Atlantic Region director for the Humane Society of the United States. "But I believe it will happen soon. We will not stop working at it or looking for it, not ever."

Interesting that the tests were funded by the USDA.

In the near future, once an effective vaccine is developed, it will mark the beginning of a true all out assault on deer hunting by the HSUS and their ilk. All previous efforts by opposition groups to eliminate hunting rights will pale in comparison to what we will see at that time.

[muskrat]

Lets hope they all fail, outcome will horrific.
Matt