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Show C4 Wednesday, April 13, 2005 .Vernal Express. Friday's Wolf plan game times changed Uintah baseball and softball home games against Union Friday will begin at 4 p.m. The normal starting times of 3 p.m. have been moved to 4 p.m. to accommodate Union coming com-ing to Vernal, said Rob DeCol, Uintah High Athletic director. ready for review The first draft of a plan that will guide how wolves are managed man-aged in Utah is now available for public .comment. The plan is available on the Internet at www.wildlife.utah. gov. Comments about the plan must be received no later than April 1. Utah's Wolf Working Group will consider the comments as the group drafts its final copy of the plan to present to the public at a series of meetings in May. After considering the public comments received at the meetings, the plan will be presented to the Utah Wildlife Board for approval at its June 9 meeting in Salt Lake City Wolves are still listed on the federal list of threatened and endangered species and are managed by the federal government. gov-ernment. The plan the group is working on will guide how the Division of Wildlife Resources manages wolves in Utah, if wolves are ever taken off the federal list. The Wolf Working Group consists con-sists of 13 citizens. Sportsmen, wolf advocates, ranchers and people with other wolf-related interests are among those in the group. The DWR assembled the group in the summer of 2003 to draft a plan that will guide the management of wolves that may one day make their way to Utah from surrounding states. "The group has worked on this plan for almost two years," said Kevin Bunnell, mammals program coordinator for the DWR. ' "Now they're anxious to receive comments from the public about it. I would encourage encour-age everyone with an interest in wolves to review what the group has done and provide their comments by April 1." 7 D gH7 (33 (fftpSSIMOT FIND OUT FOR YOURSELF! ear inspection usina the latest video technology. i iir 1 &mm I Call now to avoid waiting! 789-0709 oooooooooo ALL oooooooooo rFREE Complete Electronic Hearing Test This Audiometric evaluation will precisely show what you've been missing. & FREE Video Otoscope Ear Inspection This show-all picture of your ear canal is displayed on a color TV monitor, so you'll see exactly what we see. & .FREE Package of Hearing Aid Batteries If you now wear a hearing aid, you will receive one free package of hearing aid batteries. If we test your hearing you will receive another free package. (.lhis orfer good tor. one usage by heanng aid user only.J V I FREE In Office Repairs ooooooooo ooooooooo Save 50 AII-ln-The-Ear $495.00 i Model 702 Full Shell 10W5 All in-office hearing aid repairs shall be free... and factory repairs, regardless of make or model shall be 50 Off! 2 Days Only The Digital Programmable Hearing Aid of the future... IS HERE TODAY!! Save 50 All-ln-The-Canal $795.00 -G Model 702 Canal 10835 OR... Maybe you want better hearing that no-one can see. No manual volume controls for you to adjust. Just slip it into your ear and it adjusts itself automatically as you listen! AQA the suggested retail price of dA3 O Ul I asetofDiaitalHearinaAii a set of Digital Hearing Aids. Ask about our financing. mm vmsm Chronic Wasting Disease appears not to be spreading Good news came from chronic chron-ic wasting disease sampling conducted by the Division of Wildlife Resources this past fall - the disease that's fatal to deer and elk does not appear to be spreading in Utah. The DWR tested 3,067 samples from deer and elk taken during last fall's hunting seasons. A total of seven mule deer tested positive for he disease. All of these deer came from the La Sal Mountains in southeastern southeast-ern Utah, which is one of three areas where chronic wasting disease (CWD) has been found in Utah. The seven hunters who took the deer were contacted by the DWR and were made aware of the findings. "We met our CWD sample goals on most of our units, but fell short in a few of them," says Leslie McFarlane, wildlife disease dis-ease specialist for the DWR. "We also started testing elk this year," she said. "We collected col-lected 405 samples that tested positive for CWD. We'll continue contin-ue testing both deer and elk in those areas this year." In addition to the La Sal Mountains, CWD has been found in deer in the Vernal area in the past. A total of 438 deer and 226 elk samples were collected col-lected from that area this fall. None of the animals tested posi-tiveforCWD. posi-tiveforCWD. The Fountain Green area in central Utah is the third area where a CWD-positive deer has been found in the past. The DWR tested 607 deer samples from the area last year and did not find CWD in any of the samples. sam-ples. "It doesn't appear that the disease dis-ease is spreading to new areas in Utah and it isn't spreading much even in the areas where we've found it in the past," McFarlane said. "We're happy with what we found in 2004, but there's still more work to do." McFarlane says the DWR started sampling deer in southwestern south-western and western Utah in 2004. Those are the only areas in the state where CWD sampling had not been done in the past. "We need at least one more year of data from southwestern and western Utah to determine whether we have CWD in those areas," she said. "We also need to continue sampling elk in areas where we've found CWD before we can draw conclusions about whether elk populations in Utah have CWD. CWD isn't as prevalent in elk as it is in deer, so we're hopeful that we'll find the state's elk herds are unaffected unaf-fected by the disease." McFarlane says the DWR will continue sampling for CWD across Utah in 2005. In addition, the DWR has started a special study on the La Sal Mountains to learn more about the behavior behav-ior and migration patterns of deer in the area. "It's important for people to remember that there is currently cur-rently no evidence that CWD can be naturally transmitted transmit-ted to humans or livestock," McFarlane said. "It also does not appear to cause catastrophic catastroph-ic die offs in deer or elk populations." popula-tions." People can learn more about CWD by logging onto the DWR's Web site run by the Chronic Wasting Disease Alliance (www. cwd-info.org). This site includes links to CWD information on other - Web sites, including Wisconsin's, which contains some excellent information about CWD. |