GREEN RIVER -- Cattle herds in northwest Wyoming are at greater risk for brucellosis as long as the disease remains prevalent in Yellowstone National Park's elk and bison herds.

If the risks are greater, then why not create a risk area in the three states surrounding the park that would allow a higher incidence of brucellosis in cattle before the states risk losing their prized brucellosis-free status?

"We do need to find a different way of doing business," Wyoming Livestock Board Director Jim Schwartz told lawmakers during a meeting Tuesday.

"We need to try to give these producers in that area the initial tools to work with ... to let them test out of their brucellosis problems," Schwartz said. "There's a huge amount of frustration out there" with federal brucellosis rules.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture normally revokes a state's brucellosis-free status after the discovery of two infected herds within two years. Loss of the status results in costly testing requirements for all Wyoming cattle before they're sold or moved across the state line.

But state livestock officials said changing federal brucellosis rules to include the creation of "wildlife risk management" zones around the park could be one way to help producers operating in northwest Wyoming deal with disease without endangering the state's status.

State veterinarians from Wyoming, Montana and Idaho met last month to discuss ways of jointly dealing with cases of brucellosis, a bacterial disease that can cause pregnant cows to abort their first calves.

They're also working to try and convince federal livestock officials to consider changing some of its brucellosis regulations, including a requirement that a rancher with an infected herd must slaughter the herd to maintain the state's brucellosis-free status.

"One proposal out there is to create risk areas in all three states around the park," assistant state veterinarian Jim Logan told members of the Legislature's Joint Agriculture, State and Public Lands and Water Resources Interim Committee.

"(Under the proposal) the state would be allowed to have ... up to several or more cases in cattle herds within the risk (zones), as long as the source is considered to be a wildlife source," Logan said.

"The benefit to producers in risk areas would be that they're not asked to depopulate their herds if a case shows up," he said. "They would basically be under quarantine ... with a depopulation option."

Risks already defined

The brucellosis rules were written to prevent the transmission of the disease from one cattle herd to another.

But despite decades of efforts to eradicate the disease in cattle, brucellosis is still endemic in elk and bison herds in northwest Wyoming, which spread the disease to cattle herds in the three states surrounding Yellowstone Park.

Wyoming has been classified as brucellosis-free since September 2006, after losing the status in 2004.

But the state is once again in danger of losing the status after two cows from the Daniel area in Sublette County tested positive for the infection at a sale barn. The owner of the Daniel herd has agreed to slaughter his cows, thus preserving for now the state's brucellosis-free status.

State and federal livestock officials, however, are still in the process of testing thousands of cattle in other western Wyoming herds and if an infection is confirmed, the state's status would most likely be revoked.

Logan said Sublette and Teton counties, the western third of Fremont County and northern two-thirds of Lincoln County are considered a special brucellosis surveillance area by the state.

Logan said stockgrowers in the surveillance area operate under the state's emergency brucellosis testing rules.

"Our risks are already defined in (northwest Wyoming)," he said.

"If we do (risk management zones), the rest of the state would not be under the stringent testing performances they currently are and the strict testing rules would already be in place for that areas," he continued. "It's kind of right-in-line to progress to that."

Contact southwest Wyoming bureau reporter Jeff Gearino at (307) 875-5359 or gearinotribcsp.com