Overcoming deer management challenges

Red deer populations normally range freely over estate boundaries, meaning problems can arise when adjacent estates have divergent management objectives. Estates wishing to manage primarily for biodiversity by regenerating native woodland or conserving peatland with minimal use of fencing often reduce deer populations through enhanced culling, which can negatively impact on the interests and business of adjacent traditional deer stalking estates. Issues between neighbours can hamper the ability of estates to carry out their management aims. The issues can be contentious; this study seeks to shed light not heat on the topic. West Highland case study estates were sought by word of mouth. We looked for case study pairs where issues between neighbours had been resolved or were on-going. Five case studies were carried out: two pairs of estates and one unpaired estate. Information was collected to allow characterisation of the estates, the nature of the issue with the neighbour, along with supporting information on the Habitat Impact Assessment (HIA) process, Deer Management Groups (DMGs), the participants’ views on fencing, and the key challenges faced by participants in relation to deer management. We found the deer management issues were only partially resolved, or were unresolved, with participants resigned to the problem. HIAs were being carried out in-house on the three ‘non traditional’ estates and by contract surveyors on the two ‘traditional stalking’ estates. Participants from the ‘traditional stalking’ estates felt positive about the use of deer fencing, while those from the ‘non-traditional’ estates held a variety of different views on fencing, from pragmatic support to being ‘anti-fence’. Participants from ‘traditional stalking’ estates felt the key challenge facing them was government interference, while those from ‘non-traditional’ estates were concerned by getting trees to regenerate, maintaining fences, and maintaining high levels of deer culling

Comparing the immune response to a novel intranasal nanoparticle PLGA vaccine and a commercial BPI3V vaccine in dairy calves

peer-reviewedBackground There is a need to improve vaccination against respiratory pathogens in calves by stimulation of local immunity at the site of pathogen entry at an early stage in life. Ideally such a vaccine preparation would not be inhibited by the maternally derived antibodies. Additionally, localized immune response at the site of infection is also crucial to control infection at the site of entry of virus. The present study investigated the response to an intranasal bovine parainfluenza 3 virus (BPI3V) antigen preparation encapsulated in PLGA (poly dl-lactic-co-glycolide) nanoparticles in the presence of pre-existing anti-BPI3V antibodies in young calves and comparing it to a commercially available BPI3V respiratory vaccine. Results There was a significant (P < 0.05) increase in BPI3V-specific IgA in the nasal mucus of the BPI3V nanoparticle vaccine group alone. Following administration of the nanoparticle vaccine an early immune response was induced that continued to grow until the end of study and was not observed in the other treatment groups. Virus specific serum IgG response to both the nanoparticle vaccine and commercial live attenuated vaccine showed a significant (P < 0.05) rise over the period of study. However, the cell mediated immune response observed didn’t show any significant rise in any of the treatment groups. Conclusion Calves administered the intranasal nanoparticle vaccine induced significantly greater mucosal IgA responses, compared to the other treatment groups. This suggests an enhanced, sustained mucosal-based immunological response to the BPI3V nanoparticle vaccine in the face of pre-existing antibodies to BPI3V, which are encouraging and potentially useful characteristics of a candidate vaccine. However, ability of nanoparticle vaccine in eliciting cell mediated immune response needs further investigation. More sustained local mucosal immunity induced by nanoparticle vaccine has obvious potential if it translates into enhanced protective immunity in the face of virus outbreak