Conference dinner selfie, but no sign of Delilah
If they were nursing hangovers, they would have missed a great final day featuring papers and plenaries relating to TB in wildlife. There was plenty about TB in badgers, lots about wild boar from the Spanish contingent, as well as discussions about Elk and White Tailed Deer in Michigan and Canada.
The conference was then summed up with a kind of progress report on the countries around the world with TB - leaders: Australia; laggards - Great Britain.
The wildlife papers were interesting for a couple of reasons. I was struck by the low levels of TB in the wildlife but as was pointed out to me, their control is often driven by fear of having much higher levels of TB if they don't stamp it out. The New Zealanders like to use the phrase 'taking your foot of the gas', or throat. That is, you don't stop until its completely over: not nearly, but completely.
Another explanation relates more to the ways in which nature is understood, and how it fits with other concepts such as wilderness, nature and landscape.
Todd Shury's presentation concerning TB in Elk in Canada captured this well. TB Elk live in Riding Mountain National Park. Elk numbers were reduced as a way of managing TB - Shury showed that there was a relationship between population density and TB. But the reduction of Elk was also permitted by the way Elk were perceived to fit into a wilderness landscape. Before carrying out Elk control, they carried out a lot of stakeholder consultation. As in many of these cases, there is conflict between farmers (concerned about TB), hunters (who want to preserve wildlife for the hunting value) and no doubt others who see Elk and the landscape for its intrinsic value. It became clear during these consultations that Elk reduction related to perceptions of the way those Elk fitted into a 'natural wilderness' landscape. The Elk belonged there; they created meaning for that place. But that place had to be natural, and there was a sense of their being 'too many' Elk in the park. This is the natural balance / natural equilibrium discourse that so often comes up in environmental management controversies (something which also comes up in relation to badgers). Perhaps also, the need to do something about TB in Elk reflected the need for wilderness - i.e. national parks - to be spaces of 'pure' nature - that wilderness has a certain natural (and moral) order, disease not being part of it, a sign of human interference. Again, this relates to the equilibrium discourse where people describe 'right' levels for nature. Where natural populations become diseased, so those populations have become less natural, and nature needs a helping hand from humans to get back to being natural.
The talks about TB in Michigan fitted well with the Canadian story. Melinda Cosgrove described how bans on feeding deer were ignored (as a way of managing the population) because people cared for the animals in the winter. They couldn't stand by and watch them suffer during hard winters so provided additional feed when they shouldn't have. The public's caring for those individual animals was a contrast to the Michigan Government' desire to care for the deer population as a whole - by allowing numbers to reduce 'naturally' by denying feed etc.
By contrast, Dan O'Brien's talk showed that when people profess a desire to reduce populations they don't tend to follow through with actions. Michigan liberalised their hunting permits to allow farmers and landowners to shoot deer when they wanted. It turned out that despite this opportunity, few could be bothered. Whether this was down to not believing they'd make much difference, not believing that that there was a problem with the population or individuals wasn't clear - it would be fascinating to explore those issues further.
So that was M.bovis for another 4 years. The next conference will be in 2018. It'll be a toss up between South Africa, Mexico and Dublin. Wherever it is, Im looking forward to it.
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