Tom Venesky: Time is now to implement regulations where new CWD cases have emerged in Pennsylvania – Outdoor News
Ever since chronic wasting disease appeared in Pennsylvania in 2012, the state Game Commission has hammered home the importance of not spreading high-risk parts to other areas.
But it could be happening right now, and the agency isn’t doing anything to stop it.
At least not yet.
For the first time, the northeast region of the state now has confirmed cases of CWD – two wild deer and one captive animal.
On Feb. 27, the Game Commission held an informational meeting in Hazleton, right in the heart where two of the new cases were discovered. I always felt the agency had a pretty good handle on staying on top of the disease, although it’s limited in its ability to stop the spread.
For a disease that seems to appear at random before evolving into a larger outbreak, stopping CWD is a tough task.
After the meeting, I still felt like the commission is staying on top of the CWD issue, with one exception that I find troubling.
Consider the timeline of the new CWD case in Luzerne County, and you’ll be worried as well.
A buck was shot during the second week of rifle season and the hunter sent a sample to be tested on Dec. 30, according to the agency. The results came back on Jan. 15, and the Game Commission let the public know about the positive case in a news release on Jan. 31.
The next day, the Ag Tag permit season began, and that’s where the problem starts as well.
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There have been two confirmed cases of CWD so far in Luzerne County, specifically in Sugarloaf Township. The township is home to a lot of farmland, some of which is enrolled in the Ag Tag program. The program allows permitted hunters to harvest antlerless deer from Feb. 1 to April 15 in an attempt to mitigate crop damage.
So, in Luzerne County, you have news breaking of the first-ever CWD case being found in the area, and a hunting season (Ag Tag) beginning the next day, yet no regulations to prevent hunters from transporting carcasses – especially the high-risk parts (head and spinal cord) that contain heavy concentrations of the prions that cause CWD – out of the area.
It’s an enormous risk, one that was highlighted during the Hazleton meeting by Andrea Korman, the agency’s CWD biologist. Several times during her presentation Korman emphasized the risk of moving harvested deer out of an infected area.
“If you take an infected deer and deposit those high-risk parts where you don’t have an infection, you just contaminated that area,” she said.
That’s a fact.
In other parts of the state where the disease has been found, the agency has established Disease Management Areas that mandate a ban on the movement of high-risk parts outside of the area. It is also unlawful to feed deer or use urine-based attractants within a disease management area.
So why are hunters, right now, allowed to harvest deer on an Ag Tag farm in Sugarloaf Township – where CWD has been found – and transport them anywhere?
Such a loophole is an easy pathway to spread the disease elsewhere.
Suppose a hunter from a part of the state where CWD hasn’t been detected obtains an Ag Tag permit for a farm in Sugarloaf Township. Even though CWD has been found in that area, the hunter can still harvest a deer, take it back home to the non-CWD area, process it and throw the remains in the woods.
And if that harvested deer happened to be infected with CWD, Korman’s earlier statement now becomes a tragic reality. All it takes is one.
A new disease management area is coming for Sugarloaf Township, and when the boundaries are set, transportation of high-risk parts will be prohibited. But that’s not likely to happen until April when the Game Commission board is scheduled to meet.
Considering the new Luzerne County detections were released to the public on Jan. 31 and the next board meeting is April 12, that’s more than two months before any action is taken to restrict movement of high-risk parts, feeding deer or anything else.
That’s too long.
But the solution is simple.
If CWD is found in a new area while a hunting season is underway, the Game Commission needs to immediately follow its process for designating a disease management area by enacting a 10-mile radius buffer around the detection site. The agency also needs to take quick action to inform hunters of the new designation and the ban on transporting high-risk parts.
In a perfect world, it would be nice to have time to establish proper disease management area boundaries and get the word out to hunters prior to hunting season once a detection is found in a new area – but it doesn’t always work that way.
If the movement of high-risk parts is a potential avenue through which CWD could be spread to new areas, it needs to be addressed as soon as a detection is found.
Deer are being harvested right now on Ag Tag farms in the epicenter of the new CWD detections in Luzerne County, and nobody knows for sure where the carcasses are ending up.
The protections afforded by a disease management area need to be immediate.
Waiting for the next board of commissioners meeting may be too late.
