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that could be “difficult, if not impossible,” to treat, said Tony Goldberg, an epidemiologist at the University of Wisconsin. Researchers know that antibiotic-resistant pathogens like Salmonella or E. coli can transfer from farmers to livestock and vice versa, but there’s little evidence to similarly connect humans and wildlife. “If you live in an environment connected in any way with wildlife, then you will acquire their bacteria, and they will acquire yours. This is the ecology of resistance,” said Singer, who has been studying infectious diseases for 20 years. According to Cristóbal-Azkarate’s collaborator Carlos Amábile-Cuevas, a microbiologist at Fundación Lusara, “it’s farfetched to have bacteria [from] monkeys actually cause infections in humans.” Amábile-Cuevas is looking into genetic markers of resistance in the bacteria from these samples. For now, he said, “we are completely in the dark [about] which kind of processes led to this type of resistance.” J. Cristóbal-Azkarate et al., “Resistance to antibiotics of clinical relevance in the fecal microbiota of Mexican wildlife,” PLOS ONE, doi:10.1371/jour nal.pone.0107719, 2014.
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JANUARY 2015
Hunting – Another Arm of Agriculture by KERRIE COX ROMERO, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NEW MEXICO COUNCIL OF OUTFITTERS & GUIDES unting in New Mexico is big business. A recent study published by the New Mexico Department of Game & Fish (NMDGF) on the economic contributions of hunting, fishing, and trapping, showed that on average the hunting segment alone supports roughly 4,700 jobs and contributes more than $265 million to our state GDP annually. This would not be possible if not for the tireless conservation efforts made by private land owners. New Mexico is unique in that we have far more public land than any state east of us, yet we have more private land than many of the other western states. Because of this dynamic our private landowners are responsible for managing a large portion of the habitat that sustains our state wildlife. As any rancher or farmer knows, stewardship is the nature of the agricultural community and it truly shows in the health and quality of our wildlife. Landowners have helped New Mexico
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attain a reputation for having first class big game hunting and for housing some of the best quality bull elk in the world. Landowners are incentivized for their conservation efforts through the allocation of landowner hunting permits, another system that is uniquely New Mexico. Several other western states provide similar permit allocations to landowners but none quite like our E-plus and A-plus systems. Although the systems have their fair share of abusers and there are a few minor flaws, nowhere else in the nation are landowners, large and small, recognized for their conservation efforts to the degree that New Mexican landowners and land managers are. On average the NMDGF allocates roughly 18,000 private land elk and 3,500 antelope permits annually based on the habitat and water provided for that wildlife. Based on a study of the professional hunting industry, conducted by the New Mexico Council of Outfitters & Guides, landowners collected substantial supplemental ag income. And while it’s not widely spoken of, for many in production agriculture, hunting revenues can mean the difference between staying on continued on page 67