Surveillance and Monitoring of White-Tailed Deer for Chronic Wasting Disease in the Northeastern United States

Abstract

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a prion disease that affects both wild and captive cervid populations. In the past 45 y, CWD has spread from northern Colorado to all bordering states, as well as the midwestern United States (Midwest) and northeastern United States (Northeast), Canada, and South Korea. Because CWD is a relatively new issue for wildlife management agencies in the Northeast, we surveyed a representative (e.g., cervid biologist, wildlife veterinarian) from 14 states to gain a better understanding of state-specific surveillance measures. Between 2002 and 2012, New York (37,093) and Pennsylvania (35,324) tested the greatest number of harvested white-tailed deer Odocoileus virginianus in the Northeast. Additionally, the 14 states surveyed have tested 121,730 harvested deer, or approximately 15,216/y, since CWD was first detected in 2005. The most common tissues used by agencies in the Northeast for testing were retropharyngeal lymph nodes, which have been determined to be the most reliable in detecting CWD in cervids. Understanding CWD surveillance efforts at a regional scale can help to provide guidance for the development of new surveillance plans or the improvement of existing ones. Furthermore, collaborations among state and regional agencies in the Northeast may attempt to identify deficiencies in surveillance by state or subregion.

Spatial heterogeneity of prion gene polymorphisms in an area recently infected by chronic wasting disease

“…A total of 701 uninfected deer and 27 infected deer were successfully sequenced from white-tailed deer populations in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. These areas are characterized by low prevalence rates (<1% in subregions 2 and 4) [32,33] or no disease incidence (subregion 1) in free-ranging populations. Chronic wasting disease was first detected in subregion 3 in 2015 along the border with subregion 2.…”

Habitat influences distribution of chronic wasting disease in white‐tailed deer

“…The spatial distribution of CWD in the central Appalachian region yielded insights into roles played by covariates that had not been observed in other regions and other anecdotal observations (Farnsworth et al , Osnas et al , Walter et al ). For example, 140 positive cases were detected over a 7‐year span in the central Appalachian region from samples collected by all methods of surveillance (i.e., hunter harvest, road‐kills, and sharpshooting; Evans et al ). Over a comparable time period using the same methods of surveillance, more than twice and nearly 3 times the number of positives were detected in Wisconsin's disease eradication zone ( n = 316; Grear et al ) and along the Wisconsin‐Illinois border ( n = 382; O' Hara Ruiz et al ), respectively.…”

“…Over a comparable time period using the same methods of surveillance, more than twice and nearly 3 times the number of positives were detected in Wisconsin's disease eradication zone (n ¼ 316; Grear et al 2006) and along the Wisconsin-Illinois border (n ¼ 382; O' Hara Ruiz et al 2013), respectively. The lower number of positives in this region of the Northeast (Evans et al 2014) compared to the agricultural-forest dominated landscape of the Midwest with comparable sampling efforts would suggest a lower potential for spread of CWD because of greater isolation of deer matriarchal groups in large homogenous forests or the epidemic is in an earlier stage of development. Further research on genetic relatedness and subpopulation structuring is underway and will provide additional information on movements of deer in this region similar to previous research in the Midwest (Kelly et al 2014).…”

“…). The core was located in West Virginia, where CWD was first confirmed in a deer killed by a vehicle in 2005 and since has been found in deer harvested in nearby counties and in adjacent states (Evans et al ). Primary land cover consisted of deciduous oak‐hickory forests with sparse stands of conifers (Vogelman et al ).…”

The ecology of chronic wasting disease in wildlife

“…1) (Williams & Young, 1980), but its subsequent spread has remained a mystery. Some detections have been linked to the translocation of infected captive cervids to previously uninfected cervid farms (Joly et al, 2003), including the spread of CWD in the USA and Canada (Evans, Schuler & Walter, 2014) and between Canada and Asia (Lee et al, 2013). For example, the transfer of infected captive cervids from the USA to Canada resulted in the spread of the CWD to at least one facility in Ontario and a captive cervid farm in Saskatchewan (Bollinger et al, 2004).…”