Chronic wasting disease continues to be a hot-button topic in numerous white-tailed deer hunting hot spots, including Texas, which again has notched another milestone biologists, land managers, breeders and hunters won’t want to see.
The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has documented more chronic wasting disease positives at deer breeding facilities in Matagorda and Mason counties — the first positive detection of the disease in these counties. TPWD and the Texas Animal Health Commission documented that the new cases discovered this week are tied directly to positive CWD discoveries back in March in breeding facilities in Hunt and Uvalde counties.
According to TPWD, “an epidemiological investigation found that both deer breeding facilities had received deer from a Uvalde County premises where CWD was found March 29. Postmortem tissues samples were submitted by the permitted deer breeders to assist TPWD and TAHC with the epidemiological investigation. The National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, has since confirmed CWD in those tissue samples.”
TPWD officials noted in an official news release that they and TAHC officials have secured all deer at the Matagorda County and Mason County deer breeding facilities and plan to conduct additional investigations for the disease. In addition, other breeding facilities and release sites that have received deer from these facilities or shipped deer to these facilities during the last five years have been contacted by TPWD and cannot move or release deer at this time, officials noted.
On March 31, TPWD and TAHC reported two CWD confirmations at breeding facilities in Hunt and Uvalde counties, officials noted. The Hunt facility underwent further DNA testing to confirm animal identification and origin, and on May 12 the DNA test results confirmed the deer’s connection to the premises.
“Regrettably, the gravity of this situation continues to mount with these new CWD positive discoveries, as well as with the full understanding of just how many other facilities and release sites across Texas were connected to the CWD positive sites in Uvalde and Hunt Counties,” said Carter Smith, Executive Director of TPWD, in a release. “Along with our partners at the Texas Animal Health Commission, we will continue to exercise great diligence and urgency with this ongoing investigation. Accelerating the testing at other exposed facilities will be critical in ensuring we are doing all we can to arrest the further spread of this disease, which poses great risks to our native deer populations, both captive and free-ranging alike.”
TPWD and TAHC said they continue to work together to determine the extent of the disease within all the affected facilities and evaluate risks to Texas’ free ranging deer populations.
CWD is a fatal transmissible neurological disease in the family of infectious diseases that include bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as “mad cow disease,” scrapie in sheep, feline spongiform encephalopathy in cats in Europe, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and a new variant in humans. CWD is believed to be caused by a misfolded protein that replicates and infects normal proteins, according to researchers. CWD is named for its symptoms, including appetite loss, weight loss, listlessness, excessive drooling, blank stares, decreased awareness and behavioral changes. The diagnosis of the disease can’t be made by symptoms since other toxic and neurological afflictions can cause an animal to exhibit similar symptoms, according to researchers.
CWD originally was discovered in captive Colorado animals 35 years ago. However, during the past five years the disease has been detected in free-ranging deer and elk in several surrounding states and Canada. In 2002, a year after Texas closed its borders to importation of deer due to disease risks, CWD was reported in free-ranging deer in South Dakota, Wisconsin, New Mexico, Illinois and Utah.
In Texas, the disease was first discovered in 2012 in free-ranging mule deer along a remote area near the Texas-New Mexico border and has since been detected in 220 captive or free-ranging cervids, including white-tailed deer, mule deer, red deer and elk in 11 Texas counties, according to TPWD.
CWD, which has no known immunity or treatment, occurs via natural transmission in deer, elk and moose. However, research indicates that infection of livestock through natural pathways is unlikely. It should be noted that the disease has not shown the ability to jump the species barrier to humans, according to researchers.
CWD has been shown to affect the brain, spinal cord and other lymph areas of infected animals, but proper field dressing typically removes any of these sites and hunters are advised to also bone out their meat. If you take animals to be processed commercially, ask that the meat be handled separately from that of others, too. If you suspect an animal you harvest has some type of disease, wildlife officials urge you to keep the carcass refrigerated or on ice and contact biologists, and certainly don’t attempt to eat any of the meat.
One troubling aspect of CWD is proof that it can spread, remain dormant for years and still affect natural resources, according to researchers. Case in point: a shipment of elk from an infected herd in Canada to South Korea in 1997 went undetected for nearly 10 years. Despite tracing back the imported animals, which were euthanized for testing in 2005, CWD persists in that country, TPWD officials said. The disease previously had been found only in Canada and the U.S.
Eradication of the disease increasingly is expected to become less attainable if it spreads through more populations, according to researchers. That makes a surveillance plan critical to the earliest detection followed with an adequate response plan.
TPWD previously regulated the importation of white-tailed deer and mule deer through its scientific breeder permit program. TAHC entry requirements were incorporated into the permit program and deer imported from other states must have originated from herds enrolled in an official CWD monitoring program for at least three years. In states where the disease was detected, the required monitoring period was extended to five years. Those frameworks still exist for the importation of other cervids including elk, red deer and sika deer.
More information: Texas Parks and Wildlife Department CWD Website
More information: Texas Animal Health Commission CWD Website
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