It was only a matter of time. As of today, Georgia is the 36th state to confirm a case of Chronic Wasting Disease in its white-tailed deer population. The sample was confirmed through the United States Department of Agriculture’s National Veterinary Services Laboratories. It was a hunter-harvested deer sampled for routine surveillance in Lanier County.
Following the positive confirmation, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources’ (DNR) Wildlife Resources Division (WRD) implemented its response plan and are taking additional samples from the area to try and determine if the infection is widespread. Lanier County is just one county off from the Florida border, where previous CWD cases have been reported. Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee have also reported cases – leaving only South Carolina as a Georgia neighbor without a reported case.
“I want to assure our hunters that deer hunting will continue to thrive in Georgia, despite this current discovery,” said Walter Rabon, Commissioner of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. “Working together with our hunters and all Georgians, we will manage CWD and maintain healthy deer herds.”
CWD is a fatal, neurological disease that affects cervids – the family that includes deer, moose and elk (and reindeer for those who live in more arctic climes, such as the first case of CWD in Europe – a reindeer in Norway in 2016). CWD is somewhat similar to the infamous “mad cow disease” – caused by infectious proteins in the brain. As of yet there are no treatments or preventative vaccines. Unlike mad cow disease, there are no known cases of transmission to humans (though even mad cow disease has reportedly only affected less than 300 people worldwide). The CDC does recommend that hunters harvesting a deer from a known CWD area get their animal tested prior to consuming the meat and do not consume if the animal tests positive.
The response plan is to determine the geographic extent and prevalence rate in the CWD Management Area, an area that includes the county where the sample was found and any county within a 5-mile radius of the location of the sample – in this case, Lanier and Berrien counties. With collaboration from landowners, the DNR will use “cluster sampling” to determine infection rates.
For hunters and landowners, collaboration with DNR is one of the keys to preventing spread of CWD. Moving live deer is the greatest risk to spreading CWD. Moving whole carcasses is also a danger. Any parts not intended for consumption should be left of the property where the deer was killed, sent to a landfill or buried.
As of now, most of the impact has been limited and hunting has not been severely affected, but without careful management, that could change. While not thought of very often, commercial deer breeding is a $7.9 billion annual impact business on the U.S. economy, supporting more than 50,000 jobs. In Georgia, the economic impact of deer hunting is somewhere around $1.5 billion, traveling and staying at hotels. Poor land management 100 years ago saw deer numbers in Georgia dip below 10,000, today, there are more than 1 million. The DNR, and the many conservation and preservation groups that are supported by hunting dollars, hope it stays that way.
