No easy answers: Dealing with brucellosis difficult for state, ranchers

A herd of elk congregates next to cattle being fed on private land

The problem seems insurmountable. Some wild elk in southwestern Montana, valued by hunters and conservationists, are infected with brucellosis. Cattle ranchers in the same region want those infected elk kept away from their cows to avoid transmitting the disease and the consequences that come with a cow that tests positive for brucellosis. “FWP finds itself very much in the middle,” said Jeff Hagener, director of Fish, Wildlife and Parks, at a brucellosis talk on Saturday at Montana State University. The agency has even been sued by sportsmen for creating new tactics to keep cattle and elk separate. That lawsuit was eventually settled out of court. FWP estimates that about 25,000 to 30,000 elk winter on 22 core ranges in the large landscape that surrounds Yellowstone National Park in Montana. About 56 percent of those elk winter on private land. The scale of private land ownership on winter ranges goes from 14 percent on the Taylor’s Fork in the southern Madison Mountains to 99 percent in the Pine Creek area of the Paradise Valley. At the end of 2010, the state Department of Livestock said “234 producers owning approximately 42,000 cattle and domestic bison” overlap with those elk winter ranges in what’s called the Designated Surveillance Area for brucellosis in southwest Montana. The DSA covers portions of Gallatin, Beaverhead, Madison and Park counties. Although elk often use private lands where cattle graze, only 27 positive cases of brucellosis have been detected in cattle in Montana since the first outbreak in 2007, this despite the fact that 10,520 animals have been tested — an infection rate of .0025 percent. All of the cattle that became infected had been vaccinated against brucellosis, meaning the vaccine isn’t 100 percent effective. “There’s no perfect vaccine out there,” said Eric Liska, the Montana Department of Livestock brucellosis veterinarian. Even at such a low rate of infection among cattle, those 27 cases have sent shock waves through the Montana cattle industry, reverberating back to FWP. “Brucellosis and the fear of brucellosis are huge to our trading partners,” Liska said. Having a cow test positive for the disease also presents a hardship to the landowner. If brucellosis is found in a cow, the entire herd cannot be moved unless they go directly to slaughter. If not slaughtered, every cow in the herd must be tested and all that test positive are removed. It takes a minimum of two negative tests and a negative test during calving to declare the herd disease-free. Another assurance test is conducted six to 12 months after the quarantine. Neighbors to the infected herd must also test their cattle immediately and have them tested again six to 12 months later. Funding for the tests comes from the state, but ranchers lose money on any cattle that are slaughtered and must also continue to feed animals that likely would have been sold at auction, without having the revenue from the cattle sale to buy feed...more

Here you have federal or publicly-owned elk migrating on private land and causing harm to an entire industry.

Let's reverse that.  

Say it was privately owned cattle migrating on federal land and causing harm to a federal resource.  What would the federal reaction be in that case?