KDSN RADIO News
Number of counties with CWD in deer goes up
(Radio Iowa) – Iowa D-N-R state deer biologist Jace Elliott says there were a few more counties added to the list of those with positive Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) tests in deer following this year’s hunt. There are now 38 of the 99 counties with at least one positive detection. “I believe we have around a dozen new counties this year,” he says. Elliott says it is a slow-moving disease, but it can sometimes turn up where they don’t expect it. “In a lot of cases, we see kind of a slow creep of the edge of the disease into new counties, but often times we also detect sort of random seeming counties that are not bordering a previously positive detection,” he says. The first positive case of C-W-D was confirmed in deer in northeast Iowa along the Wisconsin border in 2013. Elliott says they started testing way before that to be prepared.
“So each year we test around five-thousand deer for C-W-D across the whole state. We’ve been maintaining those numbers since roughly 2002, the early 2000s,” he says. “Now, where we focus our effort depends a little bit on where we’re detecting the disease. We’re currently in the process of looking at new strategies in order to maximize our resources.” He says the game plan is to try to slow the spread of the disease. “Really, what we’re doing in Iowa is trying to maintain balanced quality deer populations, because we’ve known from past states' experiences that this disease can spread in low densities and high densities,” Elliott says. “So we’re just again committed to maintaining that balanced quality deer population as much as we can through regulations.” C-W-D is a disease that is fatal to animals.
You can find out more about the C-W-D cases in Iowa on the D-N-R’s website at iowadnr.gov, and look for the C-W-D interactive dashboard.
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