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We hope the agencies will continue to work together to help protect Pennsylvania's wild & farmed cervids from the spread of this disease, and that they do whatever is necessary to do so, was the official response from Melody Zullinger of the PA Federation of Sportsmens Clubs.

We also hope both agencies will step up their educational efforts to help increase awareness of the disease, the risks and steps that need to be taken to reduce those risks. More efforts must be taken to inform our hunters, especially those who hunt in endemic states, on the proper care and handling of the animal after harvest, Zullinger added.

Maryland DNR continues in close contact with wildlife officials of the Mountain State - and though our deer managers decline to point fingers, they've got to be equally, or more concerned about the state to the north of us. In Pennsylvania, there are 800 licensed deer farms - and it is figured there are another 800 not legally licensed.

Deer farms are fingered as the most vulnerable to the spread of CWD because of the population density within them. CWD is contagious. Another factor playing in Pennsylvania is that the licensing and management of deer farms there come under the Department of Agriculture, not where it would seem more appropriate - the Game Commission. We'll see how that plays out when Pennsylvania has its first CWD case; surely it's coming.

When remains the only question.

Pennsylvania is also testing about 25 percent of captive herds, and all animals more than 6 months old that die on a deer or elk farm.

"We knew Pennsylvania at some point would have to deal with the situation," Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff said. "It's just much closer than we anticipated."

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Zullinger said chronic wasting disease is another reason to computerize hunting licenses at the point of sale, instead of keeping archaic paper records. Hunters could then be notified if an outbreak occurs in the area in which they hunt, she said.

For similar reasons, she urged lawmakers to revisit the idea of forming an interstate wildlife compact, which would create a database to track hunting violations among states and potentially serve as a way to notify hunters about chronic wasting disease incidents.

UNIVERSITY PARK The big question about chronic wasting disease (CWD) is no longer if it will show up in Pennsylvania, but rather when and where, according to scientists who say it is reasonable to assume that CWD is already in the Keystone State.

By John Bartlett
john.bartlett@timesnews.com


Bob Boyd often ponders the unthinkable -- a silent killer that could leave the state largely devoid of deer.

Boyd, the Pennsylvania Game Commission's assistant director of the Bureau of Wildlife, is the agency's point man on Chronic Wasting Disease, an always-fatal disease that affects deer and elk.

That killer is now on Pennsylvania's doorstep.

Infected deer were found in both New York and West Virginia this year.

"It's a disease we don't want here,"Boyd said. "We are trying to do everything we can to prevent it."

The disease is also on the mind of Edinboro's Tom Bastow, vice president of LeBoeuf Manufacturing and a member of the Quality Deer Management Association.

"I'm concerned as a hunter," he said. "If it hits throughout the state, the hunting will be diminished. The deer won't be there to hunt."

There are other concerns as well.

Aside from the impact on the state's hunting heritage, there could be a significant economic loss if CWD reaches Pennsylvania and cannot be quickly contained.

The Game Commission estimates that about 930,000 people hunt deer in the state each year. The money they spend and the services they require fuel a $4.8 billion industry and supports about 45,000 jobs statewide, according to a 1998 study by the Center for Rural Pennsylvania.

And there's also the potential impact on the state's elk herd, which currently numbers about 600.

Elk are a popular tourist draw in economically depressed northcentral Pennsylvania, pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into the region each year.

"Elk are really important to tourism in our region --- a centerpiece," said David Morris, executive director of Northwest Pennsylvania Great Outdoors Visitors Bureau, the tourist promotion agency serving Elk and Cameron counties in the elk range. "If something happened to our elk, well, it would be awful."

CWD is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy that affects all species of deer, elk and moose. It is a disease of the nervous system that is believed to spread from animal to animal through body fluids such as saliva and urine, feces and direct contact.

It is in the same family of diseases as Creutzfeldt-Jacobs disease in humans and mad-cow disease, which can cross the species barrier and infect humans who have eaten tainted beef.

There is no hard evidence that the disease can go from members of the deer family to humans, but there is no proof it cannot, said Bryan Richards, CWD project leader for the federal National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wis.

A large-scale epidemiological study of hunters in several western states in areas where CWD is well-established could find no cases of transfer.

Even if it proves to be transferable to humans through the ingestion of infected meat, Richards said he believes that the transmission rate would likely be very low based on the experience with mad-cow disease.

Still, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has seen fit to warn us to "avoid consuming food derived from any animal with evidence of a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy."

The Game Commission puts it more simply: Don't eat meat from any animal that appears diseased, acts unnaturally or is unnaturally thin.

Bastow said he's not overly concerned, at least not yet.

"I'm not worried about it at all until it's proven (it can be transmitted)," he said.

While human health questions remain, what is not in question is the potential im-pact the disease might have on the state's deer herd.

Simply put, our deer herd could be decimated.

White-tailed deer tend to live in larger groups, which enables the disease to move more quickly through the species.

In Wisconsin, the first state east of the Mississippi River to find the disease, one computer model indicated there would be few deer left in 25 years if the disease was not contained, Boyd said.

That might help to explain why Pennsylvania's response plan involves widespread culling.

"The treatment, if we do find the disease, causes us to do something that we don't normally do and don't like," Boyd said.

The state's goal is to reduce deer populations in the area where the disease is discovered to no more than five deer per square mile, a ghostly remnant of the current statewide deer herd, he said.

The key if CWD is discovered in Pennsylvania is containment, meaning limiting and slowing its spread, which requires reducing the herd in affected areas. Early detection is important to make that a successful strategy. But a better strategy would be to keep the disease out of the state, Boyd said.

The Game Commission and other state agencies are moving on both fronts.

In 2002, the Game Commission placed an emergency ban on the importation of all live deer and elk into the state until regulations to protect the state's herds from CWD could be developed. Those regulations went into effect in early 2003.

In September, the Rendell administration announced a mandatory CWD monitoring program for the 826 deer and elk propagation or farming operations in the state, as well as those that possess deer or elk as pets. Researchers believe the shipment of undiagnosed animals from game farm to game farm has been instrumental in spreading the disease throughout the country.

Officials believe early detection in captive herds could prevent CWD from spreading to wild animals.

Also in September, the state Department of Agriculture banned the importation of specific carcass parts of deer, elk and moose from states and Canadian provinces that have a history of CWD in free-ranging deer populations, if the states themselves have not imposed a ban on removing carcass parts from CWD containment areas.

In 1998, the Game Commission began testing deer for CWD that died from unspecified illnesses. In 2001, the commission began collecting samples from hunter-killed elk in the state, and in 2002, expanded to sampling hunter-killed deer. The program will grow this year from about 2,000 animals annually to 4,000.

The Game Commission has also launched an extensive hunter-education program with the hope of both preventing the introduction of the disease from other states and improving early detection efforts in Pennsylvania.

"This is a serious problem, a serious threat," Boyd said. "Once you detect the disease it is already well-entrenched."

"I would hope everybody in the state has heard of CWD and I hope people are aware CWD has been found in New York and West Virginia and take actions to prevent it from getting here," he said.


JOHN BARTLETT, can be reached at (814) 724-6979, 870-1723 or by e-mail.

The Pennsylvania Game Commission, working with veterinarians and laboratory technicians from the Pennsylvania and U.S. departments of Agriculture, plans to test 4,000 hunter-killed deer for chronic wasting disease beginning Tuesday.

Using newly-granted emergency powers, Pennsylvania Game Commission Executive Director Vern Ross today issued an order banning the importation of specific carcass parts from states and Canadian provinces where CWD had been identified in free-ranging cervid populations.

The ban closely mirrors a similar ban issued on Sept. 21 by the state Department of Agriculture, with the support of the Game Commission. Agriculture Secretary Dennis Wolff used his emergency powers to issue the ban pending action by the Board of Game Commissioners to grant similar emergency powers to the agency's executive director.