Editor:

Two things are clear from Brodie Farquhar's story ("Vets scold Game and Fish," Casper Star-Tribune, May 5) on the recent meeting of the Governor's Brucellosis Task Force in Lander.

First, now that western Wyoming's ranchers are going to be held accountable through the threat of quarantine for their part in maintaining elk feedgrounds and thus high rates of brucellosis in feedground elk, all of a sudden these ranchers are admitting what we've known for years: that brucellosis is not the big problem that everyone has claimed it is. So there's no need to quarantine cattle when they come into contact with brucellosis-infected feedground elk.

Second, it is clear from Terry Cleveland's comments in the story that as far as G&F is concerned, its constituency is the Wyoming Stockgrowers Association, not the state's hunters, particularly elk hunters. That's why G&F continues the negligent policy of feeding elk, putting those elk at risk of a chronic wasting disease epidemic and lying about the risk to the state's hunters and citizens. CWD still is the dirty little secret of Wyoming's elk feedgrounds.

What is important to the stockgrowers is to force G&F to keep feeding elk as a form of elk control for the benefit of western Wyoming's ranchers - something I have heard freely admitted during previous discussions of the brucellosis task force.

In short, the "brucellosis problem" is and always has been a fraud. CWD will not, however, be a fraud. It will be real, and it will be deadly to elk.

On the part of G&F, elk feedgrounds reflect negligence of a public trust of the highest order, while on the part of the stockgrowers, feeding elk reflects a callousness toward wildlife that hasn't been seen in Wyoming for decades.

Neither G&F nor the stockgrowers will escape accountability for having caused a CWD epidemic on the feedgrounds.

ROBERT HOSKINS, Crowheart