Flory Lawrence
Northern News Services

NNSL (May 18/98) - Before 1925, the wood bison roamed not only free, but disease-free in the NWT.

But that year, Parks Canada officials shipped the first of 6,673 two- and three-year-old bison from the overcrowded Buffalo National Park in Wainwright, Alta., to Wood Buffalo National Park in the NWT.

This was considered by some scientists as one of the North's worst wildlife-management decisions, introducing bovine brucellosis and tuberculosis to Northern herds. The diseases will haunt the federal government, as well as the bison, for years.

An informal survey done by Wood Buffalo National Park officials shows that 29 per cent of their bison have brucellosis, and 51 per cent have tuberculosis.

The Hook Lake herd, located near the park, once numbered 1,700. Now only 450 are left. And even they will likely succumb to tuberculosis, brucellosis, wolves or hunters.

In 1991, the Deninu K'ue First Nation put forth a recovery plan, and in 1992 the territorial Department of Wildlife provided the financial support for the Hook Lake Recovery Project.

The success of the project, which involves isolating non-diseased calves from the rest of the herd, will not be known for a number of years and the project is being watched by interested officials and organizations throughout the world.

The bison-calving corral has a number of staging zones, with every year seeing a different set of bison captured from previous years.

"What we are doing is trying to preserve a part of our heritage so our children can have disease-free bison in the wild," said Danny Beaulieu, the co-ordinator for the Aboriginal Wildlife Harvesters Committee, one of the stakeholders in the project.

The two-year calf capture program began in 1996. Two weeks ago, the last 20 calves were rounded up.

All the calves have names and are hand-fed a special formula of milk, colostrum and antibiotics through giant baby bottles.

Team members include Cormack Gates, who has been involved with a similar project in the Hanging Ice Ranch near Fort Smith; Brett Elkin, a veterinarian specializing in large herbivores; and Troy Ellsworth, a bison technician who has worked with the animals for the past eight years.

Also on hand were Josie Unka, a student from Fort Resolution, and other students from southern universities.

To capture the calves, the project turned to a team of professional herders from New Zealand and equipped with a helicopter and net gun.