By MIKE COURSONGreat Bend Post
Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is a growing concern for wildlife officials in Kansas and surrounding states. That’s why the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks is offering free CWD testing to all hunters during the 2022-23 season. Since 1996, more than 33,000 mammals in the deer family have been tested in Kansas, and 735 wild deer have tested positive for the disease.
Prion diseases affect proteins in the nervous systems of animals, including humans. According to Cheyenne Bottoms Wildlife Manager Jason Wagner, CWD will eventually result in holes in a deer’s brain or spinal cord, resulting in a slow death that can take several months.
“That protein is misfolded, so it’s abnormal, and it replicates in the cells,” he said. “When that cell gets replicated with those abnormal proteins in there, that cell dies. These prions concentrate in the brain, spinal chord, and brain stem of these animals.”
CWD was first identified in a captive deer at a Colorado research facility some 60 years ago. Since then, the largest cluster of cases are found in Wyoming, Colorado, Montana, and the western halves of Kansas and Nebraska. Nearly 200 deer tested positive for CWD in Kansas in 2021.
Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies, or prion diseases, are found in various mammals under different names: Mad Cow Disease, scrapies in sheep, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. All are 100 percent fatal.
Because CWD is caused by an abnormal protein, it cannot be eradicated, cured, or prevented with vaccines. But there are ways to minimize the spread of the disease. Prions are shed through saliva, feces, urine, so eliminating the use of mineral licks and baits is one way to halt the spread of CWD.
“If they’re shedding those prions through saliva, well every deer that comes by and licks a mineral block, that’s just like licking the door handle of Walmart when you’re walking in there,” Wagner said.
Field-dressing deer and leaving the skull and spine near where the deer was harvested can mitigate the spread. As such, many states have strict regulations about which parts of a deer may be transported across state lines.
Anyone wishing for a free test this hunting season can call (620) 402-4195, or email [email protected] to get in touch with a technician.
