POWELL - Researchers and veterinarians briefing a state legislative committee on Wednesday said efforts to combat brucellosis in the region around Yellowstone National Park are costly, and the results can be tough to measure.

Some expressed concern that a federal plan to eliminate brucellosis testing in U.S. cattle outside the region could leave Yellowstone area ranchers with less government and industry help. Elk and bison in the region are the last major reservoir of the disease.

Those working to eradicate brucellosis, which can cause miscarriages in cattle and other animals, asked members of the joint Agriculture, State and Public Lands and Water Resources Committee to help provide more stable funding for long-term research.

"There may be a solution someday, but it's going to require research and new knowledge," said Frank Galey, dean of the University of Wyoming College of Agriculture and chairman of the Wyoming Brucellosis Coordination Team.

"Just to develop a decent new vaccine could cost between $10 million to $30 million, and could take 10 to 20 years," Galey said.

Livestock vaccines aren't fully effective, and some of the limited efforts to combat brucellosis in elk and bison have yielded measurable but disappointing results, said Terry Kreeger, veterinary services supervisor for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department.

Cattle producers made great strides over the past decades through intensive programs of vaccination, testing and slaughtering of sick cows, or sometimes entire herds. But those methods are not as practical for wildlife, Kreeger said.

The department has tried numerous strategies, focusing on vaccinating elk that gather at winter feedgrounds around the state.

But elk at a feedground where vaccinations were made every year for the past decade tested nearly identically for the disease as those at a second feedground where no vaccinations were made over the same period.

"I'm truly struggling with why we're continuing that program. It seems ineffective based on the data we've seen today," said Rep. Matt Teeters, R-Lingle.

Kreeger said more than $5 million in combined state and federal funds have been spent over the past nine years in Wyoming on wildlife brucellosis vaccination and research.

Programs have included using an air-powered rifle to fire a dissolvable "bio-bullet" vaccine into elk; implanting small radio transmitters in the birth canals of pregnant elk to determine where they give birth, and using traps to capture elk for testing and potential slaughter.

Over the first four years of a five-year test-and-slaughter pilot program, biologists have captured 1,845 elk and slaughtered 162, of which about half were infected.

Positive exposure tests for brucellosis among that group have dropped from 37 percent to 7 percent over that time, but about half of the elk in the study group have consistently evaded capture.

Kreeger said the $1 million spent so far on the program translates to about $13,000 to kill each infected elk, adding that the slaughtered elk are processed and given to the public.

"It would be cheaper to buy them lobster," Teeters said.

Preliminary data from another study suggest that brucellosis is becoming as common or more common among some migratory elk herds as those who spend winters at feedgrounds, Kreeger said, adding that the results defy conventional wisdom.

He said feedgrounds were initially established "to keep elk from starving, but now are strategically placed to intercept migration to stop them from spilling out onto private lands where cattle are."

Though the feedgrounds concentrate elk in greater numbers, they also allow for easier research and management actions, Kreeger said.

If it were not for the threat brucellosis poses to the livestock industry, the Game and Fish Department would probably monitor the disease among wildlife, but make no effort to reduce or eliminate it at current levels, he said.

"It's highly unlikely that we're going to eradicate this disease in elk and bison in the next half-century," Kreeger said.

Rep. Pat Childers, R-Cody, who attended the meeting but is not a committee member, suggested pressuring wildlife managers in Yellowstone National Park to step up efforts to vaccinate bison.

Galey said that he has invited National Park Service specialists to share details of a bison vaccination pilot program at a fall meeting of the state's coordination team.

Jerry Diemer, western regional director for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, discussed a federal proposal to create a National Brucellosis Elimination Zone.

The proposal would eliminate the financial burden of testing for the disease outside the Yellowstone region, allowing funding for monitoring and research to be focused on the parts of Wyoming, Montana and Idaho that are closest to the park.

Diemer said medical and livestock industry professionals in other states have expressed mixed opinions about how they would view cattle raised in the elimination zone.

Some said safeguards among the three states would be adequate to protect against the disease, while others said they would not want to accept cattle brought into their states that had been raised in the zone.

"There's a concern of are we putting a stigma on those animals and producers," Diemer said.