Buffalo Breeders Bellowing
At Talk Of Genetic Impurity

COLLEGE STATION — A Texas A&M University professor has some buffalo breeders pawing the dirt.

James Derr, an assistant professor at A&M, says his study of buffalo genes has turned up impurities, a charge that is not setting well with many of those in the business.

The molecular geneticist claims that some buffalo are, in fact a hybrid, part buffalo, part cattle, the Texas Journal of the Wall Street Journal reported last week.

The genes, Derr says, are probably the legacy of a turn-of-the-century breeding experiment by ranchers to mix buffalo and cattle to see if they could raise better meat.

But his ideas have rocked the industry where buffalo owners fear Derr's claims could send prices spiraling downward for U.S. buffalo, including the 3000 or so being raised in Texas.

"It's the public perception that matters," said Paul Jonjak, chairman of the National Bison Association board and a challenger of Derr's work. "We're not beefalo. We're not cattalo. We're bison."

Jonjak points to last fall's auction of buffalo in South Dakota's Custer State Park. Prices at the auction fell 23 percent after Derr spoke about his findings at two buffalo seminars. Park officials say the comments may have cost them at least $50,000 on 100 buffalo.

It was as if Derr "yelled fire in a crowded theater when there is no fire," Jonjak said.

The dispute has become so heated that the South Dakota attorney general dispatched a letter last October to Derr and Texas A&M President Ray Bowen demanding Derr not speak publicly about his findings in South Dakota until state officials reviewed his notes.

State officials note that South Dakota has an agricultural-product slander law, similar to one in Texas, that would allow ranchers or Custer Park officials to sue for damages if they can prove Derr's comments hurt the market for their animals.

The buffalo at Custer State Park are "taxpayers' critters," said Larry Long, South Dakota's deputy attorney general. "And they're defaming our critters."

That's not the only complaint. Custer officials allege Derr stole the DNA he used to test their animals. Derr concedes he obtained the genetic material without Custer State Park permission. But he says he got the DNA fair and square from a California graduate student he was helping with a thesis, who obtained the DNA from Custer officials for genetic testing.

"They always knew it was for genetic studies, and I'm doing genetic studies," Derr said. "There's no deception in it."

He added that he notified Park officials about his results, and they did not complain until after he spoke publicly.

Critics further allege Derr's true intent in speaking publicly about the animals is to generate a market for his testing expertise. So far, he has tested about a half-dozen private herds in Texas, but he says he did not charge for the services and has no intent to do so in the future.

"I'd rather this wasn't true, too," Derr says. But to preserve buffalo purity, he said, "it's important to raise animals that are in fact true and pure bison."

Derr discovered the cattle gene during an ongoing three-year, $120,000 study funded by the National Science Foundation. The study is designed to see what could be learned from buffalo herds to help conserve dwindling populations of other animals.

Cattle DNA has appeared in about six percent of the more than 400 buffalo he's studied so far from herds around the United States.

Last fall, Derr found the cattle gene in four animals in a 32-buffalo herd maintained by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department in Caprock Canyon State Park between Amarillo and Lubbock.

As a result, Parks and Wildlife officials, who paid $10,000 to Texas A&M to cover expenses for the testing, have separated the animals from the herd while they decide what to do with them.

One option is to slaughter the animals and sell them for meat. Another is to keep the animals in the herd, but not allow them to breed.

"We're in the wildlife business, and we don't want domesticated stock in our wildlife. We want real, pure bison," said Tom Harvey, Texas Parks and Wildlife spokesman.

Derr stressed that the cattle gene is rare and its presence should matter only to those trying to preserve the purity of the species, but not if the animals are sold for meat. Buffalo typically sell for more than comparably aged cattle.

Buffalo herds, which went from millions of animals to about 200 a century ago, have recovered to over 200,000 without showing genetic defects from the inbreeding that can accompany repopulation efforts.