WSU Professor Margaret Wild presented before the Cowlitz County commissioners yesterday evening in the final installment of a three day series of community presentations throughout western Washington, where she shared her research team’s investigation into a wildlife disease that can render elk lame and often lead to death.
Treponeme-associated hoof disease (TAHD) or elk hoof rot is a bacterial wildlife disease that can cause lesions to form on the hooves of elk. One of the first questions Wild began working to answer five years ago was how the disease was spread. She discovered that when soil is contaminated with the hooves from elk with TAHD and then exposed to healthy elk, those elk would begin to develop small, pink lesions that grew over the course of three to five months into severe lesions that made it difficult and painful to move.
Wild spent three days presenting research about her latest findings on the condition and disease with the Skagit, Wahkiakum, and Cowlitz county councils. Community members and interested stakeholders were also invited to attend and participate.
As to how to mitigate or cure the disease, Wild shared on Wednesday in Kelso that “Wildlife diseases are complex, you are dealing with free ranging animals with no health history.” Using an example of a puzzle, Wild’s research has focused on answering a few foundational questions to provide a border to the puzzle such as how the disease is transmitted and where it might have come from.
Currently, researchers in Wild’s lab are working to understand how a deficiency in certain minerals may make elk more susceptible to being infected with the disease. By using hair, they can evaluate these deficiencies in infected elk compared with healthy elk.
The findings of Wild’s investigation into the disease could inform wildlife management and mitigation tactics in order to reduce the spread of the disease, as they continue to ask questions. Part of her work is to also engage the local communities impacted by the loss of elk to the disease, “I like hearing your ideas because it gives me theories that we can hypothesize and test.”
Wild’s research was commissioned by the Legislature in 2017 with the passage of SB 5474, an annual report to the Legislature with updates can be found here and you can subscribe to get quarterly updates here.