Wasting disease spreading in US deer, elk herds
Date: 04-Apr-02
Country: USA
Author: Julie Ingwersen
Last week, Colorado Gov. Bill Owens announced that the brain-rotting disease had been diagnosed for the first time in deer on the west side of the Rocky Mountains, indicating it had broached the U.S. Continental Divide.
"Once there was a case in Wisconsin, we realized that it's farther east than we thought, and then (with) this one on Friday we realized it's farther west than we thought," Colorado Department of Natural Resources spokeswoman Dawn Taylor told Reuters.
A second deer from the same area, a hunting ranch near Craig, Colorado, has since tested positive, while a third suspected deer tested negative this week, Taylor said.
Chronic wasting disease, or CWD, has been present in North American deer and elk herds for decades, with most of the cases concentrated in northeastern Colorado, southern Wyoming and southwestern Nebraska. CWD has also turned up since 1997 in farm-raised elk herds in South Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado, Oklahoma and Montana.
However, the disease appears to have spread with renewed vigor since February, with cases emerging in Wisconsin, northwest Nebraska, and now western Colorado. Wildlife experts are still looking for an explanation.
"That's one of the big mysteries of this disease - how it travels, how it's transmitted," Taylor said.
The Continental Divide was seen as a natural barrier that had prevented CWD's westward spread for many years.
"Now that barrier has been broken," Owens said in a statement last week.
CWD is a brain-destroying illness similar to mad cow disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy or BSE, which has never been found in the United States.
Unlike BSE, there is no scientific evidence that CWD has ever been transmitted to humans, cattle or any species besides deer or elk. Still, the World Health Organization has advised against eating venison or any part of an animal showing signs of CWD.
In response to the new Colorado cases, state Division of Wildlife personnel planned to cull at least 300 deer this week within a five-mile radius of the hunting ranch near Craig.
Those animals will be tested to help officials determine whether the disease has spread to wild deer and elk populations outside the ranch, which was enclosed with fencing last year.