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Chronic wasting disease spreads in W.Va.

Sunday Gazette-Mail photo by John McCoy Since chronic wasting disease was found in a single Hampshire County deer in 2006, the disease has spread steadily to encompass roughly 108 square miles of Hampshire and Hardy counties.
Sunday Gazette-Mail photo by John McCoy
Since chronic wasting disease was found in a single Hampshire County deer in 2006, the disease has spread steadily to encompass roughly 108 square miles of Hampshire and Hardy counties.

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — The numbers are in, and to deer hunters they’re discouraging.

They show that chronic wasting disease is spreading inside West Virginia, and it’s infecting more deer in areas where it occurs. Jim Crum, deer project leader for the state Division of Natural Resources, called statistics from the agency’s latest CWD sampling effort “unsettling.”

“Of the 591 tissue samples we extracted from hunter-killed deer last fall in Hampshire County, 29 were positive for CWD,” Crum said. “That’s the highest number of positives we’ve ever had. The year before, by way of comparison, we took 672 samples and got 16 positives.”

The disease, which kills deer in much the same way mad cow disease kills cattle, was first discovered in the Mountain State near Slanesville, Hampshire County, in 2006. DNR officials immediately set up a “CWD containment zone” in an effort to keep the always-fatal malady from spreading.

They encouraged hunters to kill more deer by setting up a special antlerless-deer hunt within the county. They imposed restrictions on transporting deer carcasses outside the containment zone. They took tissue samples from hunter-killed deer at 11 game-checking stations within Hampshire County. They had agency sharpshooters kill additional deer each spring to help monitor the disease’s prevalence.

Despite their efforts, CWD continued to spread slowly but steadily…

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