CWD News: Not Good, But Not All Bad

Sportsmen and women who regularly follow news of interest to hunters and conservationists are likely well aware that the spread and frequency of chronic wasting disease (CWD), the always fatal neurological disease found in deer, has never been greater nor more widespread in North America than it is today.

New confirmed cases of CWD are being reported in state game agency press releases across the country at an alarming and regular rate – especially if you’re a game biologist, avid whitetail hunter, or anyone whose livelihood depends on the health and well-being of ungulate (deer, elk, moose) big game herds in America.

Arkansas reported its first case of CWD in an elk in Newton County this past February. Since that time wildlife managers sampled elk and deer in and around the Newton and Boone counties and confirmed an additional 82 animals testing positive for the disease. Phase two of the state’s CWD monitoring effort will be to determine how far the disease has spread in Arkansas.

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) conducted a public meeting May 7 in Ottawa, Ill. to provide information about CWD and its effect on future deer populations, and IDNR’s efforts to control the disease in that whitetail-rich state. First documented in in 2002 near Roscoe, Ill., CWD has spread across the northern edge and northeastern portions of Illinois, as far south as the Illinois River valley and has become established in portions of LaSalle, Grundy, Will, Kane, Kankakee, and Livingston counties.

In late April, the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC) reported the final results from its 2015‐2016 fall and winter testing of nearly 7,700 free-ranging deer for CWD, with seven animals confirmed positive. The new cases bring the total number of Missouri free‐ranging deer testing positive to 33 since the disease was first discovered in the state in 2010. Of the 33 cases, 21 have been found in Macon County, 9 in Adair, one in Cole, one in Franklin, and one in Linn.

The Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries announced this week it will step-up its CWD monitoring efforts in native whitetail as reports of the disease increase in neighboring Arkansas and Texas.

The relative positive news about the country’s apparent CWD outbreak currently underway is not related to the disease’s spread, but rather to the methods used for testing animals thought to be infected. In Texas, where the Lone Star’s billion-dollar captive deer-breeding and high-fence hunting industry has come under severe scrutiny with the discovery of several cases of CWD in whitetail deer, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) and Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC) have now utilized a new and effective live-testing method. This breakthrough is significant and means, for the first time, that the valuable private deer herds — as well as deer everywhere — may be tested for CWD while they are alive and not post-mortem, as was previously standard practice.

Recent testing in Texas marked the first time outside of a research facility that a deer has been certified CWD-positive through the use of a live test tonsillar biopsy sample, one of multiple methods that have been undergoing testing for more than three years. The live-testing procedure is performed by removing samples from the animal's lymphoid tissue in its throat. Rigorous scientific testing of the method indicate it to be as accurate as testing tissue taken from the head of a dead animal.

And while it may be a matter of opinion of what constitutes good or bad news when it comes to a disease that could possibly impact the future of deer hunting as we know it, another unusual wrinkle in the wild CWD saga surfaced last month in – of all places – Norway!

The Wildlife Society, a professional organization comprised of scientists, biologists and other wildlife experts, announced this week that a reindeer from the Nordfjella population in South Norway has been diagnosed with CWD, marking the first time the disease has reached Europe and the first-ever detection of the disease in a free-ranging reindeer (Rangifer tarandus).

It should come as no surprise at this point, that bewildered wildlife biologists don’t know how the disease found its way to Norway.

“That’s the million dollar question,” said Matthew Dunfee, project coordinator of the Chronic Wasting Disease Alliance. “We hope to answer it in the next coming months.”