Bluefield Daily Telegraph, Bluefield, WV

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September 14, 2009

Rabies bait drops not impacted by closure at Mercer Airport

By GREG JORDAN

BRUSHFORK – Aircraft operating out of an Upshur County airport are continuing their drops of vaccine-laced baits designed to curb the spread of raccoon rabies in southern West Virginia.

Fish meal packets containing an oral rabies vaccine are being dropped from airplanes flying over Mercer, McDowell, Raleigh, Summers, Nicholas and Greenbrier counties, said Brie Lang, public affairs specialist for the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

A representative of the program was scheduled to hold a press conference 1 p.m. at the Mercer County Airport, but the aircraft carrying this person did not land. The runway was closed until 6 p.m.

Airport Manager Randall Earnest said later that he had not been told about the scheduled stop. A landing system used by pilots was turned off because heavy equipment operating nearby could interfere with its reading, but Earnest said since the weather was clear, the plane could have landed anyway.

A notice posted at the airport’s terminal said that starting Sept. 8, the runway would be closed intermittenly for painting new stripes and markings. The job was estimated to take a minimum of two to three days to complete.

The runway closings do not hamper the vaccine drop operations, Lang said. Flights are using the Buckhannon Airport in Upshur County.

“No, not at all,” she replied when asked if any problems occurred because the operation’s aircraft could not land at Mercer County. “The airplanes are still able to fly out of the Buckhannon Airport, so operations were not interrupted.”

The USDA’s rabies vaccination program is designed to stop the westward spread of the disease, Lang said.

A case of rabies in a fox was reported Sept. 4 in Oakvale, a Mercer County community. More than 30 cases of raccoon rabies have been reported in the eastern section of Greenbrier County, but there are no current plans to drop vaccine baits there, Lang said.

“The program is actually a national program, so it is stretched the length of the Appalachian Mountains, and the national goal is to stop the westward spread of rabies, and in order to do that we have a vaccination zone,” she said. “They conduct survelliance on the western side of the zone, and through the survelliance they will test animals and see which are coming up positive, and when they determine when an area does not have any more rabid animals showing up positive, they will evaluate the resources and then shift the zone further east.”

A similar program has been able to eliminate canine rabies in southern Texas, Lang said. There coyotes were the targets of bait drops. Coyotes in West Virginia will still eat the vaccine baits currently dropped though the main target is raccoons.

— Contact Greg Jordan at gjordan@bdtonline.com

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