Arkansas Sportsman

Tests double, find 87 new CWD cases in northern Arkansas

After testing 4,234 dead deer this season, the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission detected 87 new positive cases of chronic wasting disease in northern Arkansas.

The good news is that no new cases of chronic wasting disease have been detected outside of the CWD "hot zone" of Boone, Carroll, Madison, Marion, Newton, Pope and Searcy counties.

A positive case reported in Yell County was determined to be a false positive, and a positive case reported near London in Pope County is believed to be non-endemic. Jenn Ballard, the Game and Fish Commission's veterinarian, said that no other positive cases have been detected anywhere near the place where that deer -- a roadkill -- was found. Ballard said it's possible that a hunter brought that deer from elsewhere and dumped the carcass near the Nuclear One power plant. Otherwise, it would had to have walked a long way on its own over the Ozark Mountains.

Of the 87 new positive samples, hunters killed 82. Four were target animals deliberately killed by Game and Fish Commission personnel, and one was a roadkill.

The AGFC tested nearly twice as many deer as last year, when many hunters declined to have their deer tested. The Commission staffed 17 sample stations and seven mobile stations that traveled to deer camps and other remote locations. Also, 46 taxidermists, 25 deer processing facilities and nine veterinarians participated in the effort.

Ballard also updated the commission on the agency's efforts to conduct genetic testing on deer that have been tested for chronic wasting disease.

Commissioner Bobby Martin asked Ballard to explain the point of genetic testing.

Ballard said genetic testing is directed at the chronic wasting disease prion with the intent of identifying the genotype or genotypes of the infective agent.

"This would test the theory to see if there are other origins, as opposed to one outbreak that moved across the landscape," Ballard said.

Dr. Steven Beaupre, the commission's non-voting member, said the study of chronic wasting disease in whitetailed deer is a fairly recent science, and that little is known.

"Almost all of the genetic work has been done on mule deer and elk," Beaupre said. "There's almost none on whitetails. That's a new deal. We have to start almost from scratch."

Cory Gray, chief of the commission's research unit, said a larger body of data will allow wildlife managers to see how CWD flows across the landscape.

"CWD tends to travel with rivers," Beaupre said. "Imagine a management strategy that could retard that process. That would be worth knowing."

There was considerable discussion among the commission and staff about the risks to human health of eating meat from CWD-infected deer. Beaupre noted that the federal Centers for Disease Control has updated its warning to discourage the consumption of any part of a CWD-infected animal.

Noting the lack of whitetail-specific data for CWD, Martin encouraged the AGFC's wildlife management staff to be careful with its messaging to avoid alarming the public beyond what is appropriate according to known research.

From this spot in the bleachers, it is curious that the AGFC continues to devote its testing efforts on an area where CWD is known to exist in dense prevalence. It's kind of like testing a cancerous organ for cancer every week. Of course you're going to continue to find cancer there, so what's the point?

It would be more logical to devote high-intensity testing in other parts of the state where CWD has not been detected.

To its credit, the AGFC has tested a large number of deer from around the state, but almost all of those were roadkills, and roadkilled deer comprise a narrow subset of a terminal data set.

The AGFC's testing strategy appears to be dedicated to compiling enough data from one area to form a critical mass that either leads nowhere or displays a clear path to other areas.

They could reach the same destination quicker by working from all four corners and creating a path that either leads back to the hot zone or exhibits no path at all.

Deer hunters from other parts of Arkansas are anxious to know if CWD is their parts of the state, as well. Intense testing would go a long way to answering the question that we are all asking.

It's good that CWD hasn't been found outside of the Ozarks yet, but the key word is "yet." I cannot forget that we went from zero known cases in the Ozarks to nearly 30 percent prevalence in a matter of weeks.

Sports on 12/14/2017

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