Identifying animals with Chronic Wasting Disease and limiting their presence in Arkansas are two of the goals of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission, said Cory Gray, deer program coordinator for the commission.
Gray spoke to the Rotary Club Thursday afternoon.
“There’s certain events in your life, you always remember where you were when you first heard about it. The day my phone rang that Arkansas was CWD positive was a day I won’t forget. I was in North Carolina at a conference. What’s disheartening is that we’ve been in quality deer management mode for several years.”
He gave a slide show presentation on the symptoms and spread of the disease, and how the AGF has shifted into “disease management,” which, he said, hunters, “don’t like.”
“It’s a fatal neurological disease,” Gray said of Chronic Wasting Disease, “that affects deer, elk, moose, and other members of the deer family. Those are animals that shed their antlers. It is similar to mad cow disease in the bovine family. It’s not a virus, it’s not a bacteria that we’re familiar with. It’s a deformed protein.”
Gray said that, for some reason, the “protein misshapes and causes other proteins around it to misshape. These deformed proteins congregate in the central nervous system of these animals.”
The disease, he said, is extremely resilient and a tough survivor. “There’s no removal of it. It’s very resistant to heat and it doesn’t break down over time. Forty-percent bleach solution seems to slow it down, but not by much. It’s still active.”
"It is transferred indirectly, through the environment, or directly from animal to animal,” Gray said. “Deer groom one another. They are very social. It's in the saliva, the urine, several bodily fluids. You have an animal that licks on a salt lick, the next animal comes along and licks on that same area and (receives) the disease.”
“It hides itself, it remains dormant for up to 18 months,” he said. “When it does show itself, death comes fast. That’s one of the scary things. Death comes within about seven days of (the disease) showing itself.”
Infected deer show can show many different symptoms of the disease, all or most of them subtle. Gray said deer will hold their heads at strange angles, stand in an A-frame stance to get their balance, and show physical signs of wasting away. He said they will drink and urinate simultaneously and salivate a gel-like substance.
“It’s a neurological disease, so maybe all of a sudden, you’ll see a stumble. It can be subtle in it’s appearance,” Gray said. “They’re looking at you like they’re looking over the top of glasses.”
He said the first positive elk sample of CWD was taken from a 2.5 year-old cow during the 2015 public land elk hunt on the Buffalo National River. The first positive deer sample came from a 2.5 year-old whitetail doe found dead in Boxley Valley.
There is no reliable live animal test for the disease, Gray said. Animals must be euthanized in order for samples to be taken.
He said mild Arkansas winters might make it possible for animals carrying the disease to stay alive longer. “From a disease-management standpoint, the best thing that could happen is that, the day an animal gets the disease, it dies. You don’t want to prolong (its) life.”
The commission has had a response plan in place since 2006 in the event a deer or elk from Arkansas tested positive for CWD. According to that plan, the first step was to sample deer and elk in the area surrounding the first positive case to establish “prevalence,” Gray said. “The AGFC randomly sampled 266 deer from the area surrounding the first cases. We confirmed a prevalence rate of 23 percent in the focal area.”
“We got the old 2006 plan out, updated the science and strategies, and have put it in place,” he said. Part of the plan called for the sampling of 300 animals “that appeared healthy. If you’re an elk and you wake up with a bad hair day, we’re gonna sample you. If you’re alone and you shouldn’t be, we’re going to sample you. If you are an elk, it would be best for you to wake up in a good mood.”
He said bucks were found to have a higher prevalence rate of the disease.
Phase two of the commission’s research involves the collection and analysis of road kill.
According to a Q&A sheet provided by Gray, CWD has not been proven to affect humans. Public health officials recommend not eating meat from animals known to be infected, or from those that appear sick. Gray said there is no evidence the disease has jumped to humans, or that it has spread to cows, pigs or other domestic livestock.
He said meat from infected deer has not been proven to be dangerous to human, but he said he would not advise eating such meat.
Anyone who thinks that might have seen a deer exhibiting symptoms of Chronic Wasting Disease is urged to call 800-482-9262.