Traverse City Record-Eagle

Grand Traverse County

August 31, 2008

Officials scramble to find source of CWD

By SHERI McWHIRTER

TRAVERSE CITY -- It's the scenario Michigan wildlife and agriculture officials feared for years -- an occurrence of a deadly, highly contagious disease that may threaten the state's wild deer herd.

Now the scramble begins to locate the source of chronic wasting disease here and prevent it from reaching outbreak proportions.

"We've got to freeze everything at this point until we get our arms wrapped around this," said Steven Halstead, veterinarian with the Michigan Department of Agriculture.

Baiting or feeding of wildlife in Lower Michigan now is prohibited, while the state's nearly 600 private cervid facilities are under quarantine until further notice.

MDA officials are working with the state Department of Natural Resources to review records from the contaminated facility in Kent County and five others to trace animals that were purchased, sold or moved within the last seven years. Meanwhile, approximately 60 deer at the Kent County facility were destroyed this week at taxpayer expense. The state will pay about $4,000 to cull the animals and $7,000 for subsequent disease testing and carcass disposal, while the federal government will reimburse the facility owner as much as $180,000 for lost livestock, officials said.

The ultimate goal is to keep the disease, transmitted through saliva and fecal matter, from surfacing in the wild deer herd, said Dan O'Brien, DNR wildlife veterinarian.

"The risks at this point we really don't know. We have to find out whether or not the disease is in the free-ranging deer around the facility," he said.

The DNR will issue disease control deer permits for a nine-township surveillance zone around the Kent County facility, and will test at least 300 deer there, 300 more in the remainder of the county and 300 from each adjacent county. The state also wants to test at least 50 deer from every county in the state this hunting season, an increase from 20 per county in the Upper Peninsula and 10 per county in Lower Michigan, O'Brien said.

"In order to figure out where we stand and where we go next, we need animals to test and we need hunters to do that," he said.

Lymph nodes needed for CWD tests are the same required for bovine tuberculosis and hunters are encouraged to stop at deer check stations to help in the statewide survey during the fast-approaching hunting season, O'Brien said. Lessons learned from monitoring work with bovine TB will help state officials track down CWD and develop a game plan, he said.

Scientists believe the disease is transmitted through infectious, self-multiplying proteins called prions, found in saliva and other fluids from infected animals. Deer, elk and moose can contract the disease through exposure to fluids or from contaminated environments, including soil.

"An area can be contaminated with the prions and it can remain a source of infection for susceptible animals for a long period of time, even years," O'Brien said.

That makes disease eradication challenging, he said.

"You hope we've found the disease early enough that it hasn't moved into the wild deer herd," O'Brien said.

For more on chronic wasting disease, see today's Outdoors section »

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