As a citizen of Bath I want to thank our City Council for reconsidering their previous decision and having a public hearing to listen to their constituents who oppose the implementation of a Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife/USDA plan to trap, kill, and test gray and red foxes, skunks, and racoons in the City of Bath. There is no one on either side of this issue that doesn’t recognize that there is serious rabies problem in the Mid-Coast, and we all want to solve it!
Most of the people who testified at both the USDA informational forum last Thursday, and at the March 9, 2020 Bath City Council meeting, support the globally recognized best practice of distributing Oral Rabies Vaccine (ORV) by baiting as the way to control and even eliminate rabies. Its success has been well documented from our southern border with Mexico to Maine’s own northeast border with Canada. In fact, it has been so successful in Aroostook County (Maine’s largest) that in 2019/2020 not a single case of rabies has been reported.
Many of us oppose the trapping and killing of animals as an emergency solution because it will likely be ineffective. Even the sponsor of the order, City Councilor Phyllis Bailey, said in your recent article, “risk reduction will not cure rabies, but it will give us important data on disease prevalence in Bath.” I applaud her commitment but think we have adequate data. I would like to correct a couple of points that have been reported in recent media coverage:
· The USDA does in fact know which strain of rabies is circulating in Bath. Richard Chipman, a wildlife biologist and national rabies management coordinator for the USDA, was asked the question twice at the USDA informational forum – and both times answered that it is the racoon strain.
· Mr. Chipman also stated that the Oral Rabies Vaccine currently being successfully administered by USDA in Northern Maine and the rest of the eastern United States, immunizes racoons, skunks, coyotes, and both gray and red foxes from rabies.
I believe that the most important decision made by the Council to control and eliminate rabies in our community was the creation of a Bath Rabies Response Task Force to address a long-term plan for controlling rabies in the City of Ships. Bravo! I would like to take that one step further because it has always been my position, along with others, that this is not a problem that Bath, Phippsburg, West Bath, Brunswick or any community in Maine should have to foot the bill for alone. Urban areas throughout our state are confronted with the same problem. Because of climate change and habit destruction wildlife is forced closer to our residential neighborhoods, and just like wildlife we must adapt to a changing environment as well.
This is a State of Maine problem and we need help from our Legislature in solving it. As a former Speaker of the Maine House of Representatives and four term legislator, I propose the creation of a joint program of the Maine CDC and Maine IF&W to provide support to Maine cities and towns, both financially and with “boots on the ground” in implementing successful, regional Oral Rabies Vaccine (ORV) programs throughout Maine. Legislation to create just such statewide program should have been proposed last Spring as a proactive response to this problem, but even though it wasn’t, we should all insist that happens in the next Legislative session. Each of us are citizens of this great state and although we are happy that ORV has successfully eliminated rabies in Aroostook County, a 6828 square mile area with a population of 67,653 – let’s bring those same results to Sagadahoc County with our 370 square miles and 35,392 citizens and to the rest of urban Maine. By working together with a regional ORV program, we can truly control rabies and keep our children, seniors, pets, and our entire community safe from this terrible disease.
Pat Colwell lives in Bath.
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