13-Yr Study Of Montana Roadkilled Deer Shows 2/3 Of Bucks Surveyed Had Abnormal Genitalia By 2000

[hatrack]

Hard as it is to be a voice in the wilderness, Judy Hoy has been sounding an alarm in southwestern Montana for more than 13 years. For years she's been documenting, through autopsies, photos, articles and scientific papers, changes — mutations, really — she's observed in various ungulate species in the valley. In particular, she's seen malformed genitalia among male white-tailed deer. Such observations are not unique. More and more scientists are documenting reproductive changes in male animals ranging from cricket frogs to polar bears. But the response from public health and governmental agencies has been underwhelming.

White-tailed deer came into Hoy's purview 30 years ago when her husband, Bob Hoy, began collecting road-killed deer as a warden with the Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks Service, or FWP. Beginning in 1980, Judy Hoy, a former elementary school science teacher, used some of the roadkill to feed wildlife she nursed at her Bitterroot Wildlife Rehabilitation Center. In 1996, the Hoys noticed something strange among the roadkill. "It started with Buck No. 9," Judy said. "We called him that because he was the ninth buck we had seen with malformed genitalia."

Of 54 male deer aged 3 months to 1 year they examined beginning in late 1996 through 1997, only about a third had what the couple, over decades of observation, had come to consider a normal scrotum in size and shape and the normal placement of genitals. Thirty had a scrotum that was misaligned, with one testes positioned in front of the other, one had no scrotum, one had misplaced organs, and nine had ectopic (positioned between the body wall and the skin) testes.

The next year, 25 of 49 males had anomalies in their genitals. Between 1998 and 2000, two-thirds of the bucks examined had abnormalities. Hoy took notes, kept data, shot photos and began calling Montana's FWP. She tried to interest them, or wildlife scientists in the University of Montana's Wildlife Biology program, in further study. At first, FWP personnel and others seemed interested, but it wasn't long before Hoy felt the door close in her face. A few different times she showed photos or deer carcasses to state officials or veterinarians, who she recalled would agree in her presence that what they were seeing were malformations, only to file a report that termed them "normal variations." In the case of one buck, pathologists at the Montana FWP wildlife research laboratory wrote in a response to Hoy that the cause was "vehicular impact." Hoy said the animal had been hit from the front and there was no damage to its hindquarters.

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http://www.miller-mccune.com/science_environment/divining-the-secret-of-deformed-roadkill-1441