Dozens Of nilgai Antelope Killed In Texas To Stop Tick Spread
BROWNSVILLE - South Texas ranchers brought nilgai antelope from a California zoo decades ago, when it became fashionable to stock their sprawling acreage with exotic quarry.
30 April 2007
2 minute read
These days the species native to India and Pakistan are not so much a rarity in South Texas as a nuisance. For cattle ranchers they are a possible nemesis, threatening to spread a deadly tick to the herds. Federal wildlife officials say the nilgai compete with native Rio Grande Valley species for food and trample the brush they are trying so hard to preserve.
The fast-running, 600-pound (272-kilogram) antelope have wandered all around the region, where at least one picked up a kind of fever tick from Mexico that once nearly wiped out American cattle. The ticks spread among the population and threaten the cattle.
Federal officials said they had no choice but to hire a "helicopter and gunner" to slaughter them. Thirty-seven were killed during the two-day hunt in March on a portion of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge that runs along the border.
"It's about the only way you can do them," said Edwin Bowers, director of field operations for the federal tick eradication program. "You can't hunt them on the ground successfully, they're extremely wary and fast and you can't get close to them. These animals can spread the ticks to places where there are cattle. We're obligated to get the ticks off of them however we can."
The USDA has been battling the tick (Boophilus microplus and Boophilus annulatus) for a century, enlisting cowboys to patrol a narrow tick eradication zone that runs about 500 miles (800 kilometers) along the eastern Texas-Mexico border.
