Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is a “mad cow ” type of neurological disease that impacts deer and other game animals. Because of its potential for serious damage it is being closely monitored. Now the first Yellowstone deer to test positive has been found. The animal was found dead and then necropsied.
According to Field and Strea the National Park Service (NPS) said:
“There’s “no effective strategy to eradicate CWD” now that it’s established inside the 2.2 million-acre park. According to its press release, the agency will work with the Wyoming Game and Fish Department (WGFD)—and other wildlife agencies in states that border Yellowstone—to pin-point areas with increased risk for further spread of the disease. That includes monitoring other deer species like elk and moose, which can also contract and transmit always-fatal illness.
“The first Yellowstone deer was a CWD-infected muley (mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus -editor) originally captured and fitted with a radio-tracking device in March near Cody, Wyoming, a gateway town about 80 miles east of the Yellowstone Lake area by road. It was part of a population dynamics study being conducted by WGFD biologists. In its recent press release, NPS said that “10-15% of the mule deer near Cody, Wyoming, that migrate into the southeast portion of Yellowstone during summer months are estimated to have CWD.”
The website said CWD has been spreading across Wyoming since the mid-1980’s and is now found throughout most of the Cowboy State, according to NPS. It was first detected in Montana, another state that includes portions of Yellowstone, back in 2017. In neighboring Idaho—which includes a thin sliver of Yellowstone’s far-western border—the disease wasn’t confirmed until 2021.
CWD has recently been found in deer in Texas and Ohio. Overall infection rates appear to be low but wildlife officials are maintaining a wary eye.
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
“Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a prion disease that affects deer, elk, reindeer, sika deer and moose. It has been found in some areas of North America, including Canada and the United States, Norway and South Korea. It may take over a year before an infected animal develops symptoms, which can include drastic weight loss (wasting), stumbling, listlessness and other neurologic symptoms. CWD can affect animals of all ages and some infected animals may die without ever developing the disease. CWD is fatal to animals and there are no treatments or vaccines.”
: