The announcement shocked wildlife health experts around the world.
The Norwegian Veterinary Institute recently reported that the deadly brain condition known as chronic wasting disease had turned up in a wild reindeer from the Nordfjella herd in southern Norway.
Researchers found the sick adult female reindeer as part of a wildlife monitoring project. It subsequently died and was submitted for an autopsy examination. As part of their routine exam, a small piece of its brain was tested for evidence of the disease and the initial positive result was verified using two additional laboratory tests.
Read Also
Dennis Laycraft to be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame
Dennis Laycraft, a champion for the beef industry, will be inducted into the Canadian Agricultural Hall of Fame this fall.
This may seem like a routine disease workup, but the location is problematic because it is the first case of CWD ever reported in Europe. It is also the first diagnosed case in a wild reindeer.
Evidence suggests that CWD originated in Colorado and Wyoming in the 1960s and spread from there to nearby states as well as to Saskatchewan and Alberta.
Researchers think an unusual prion protein spreads the disease between animals.
CWD is a similar disease to scrapie in sheep and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, also known as BSE and mad cow disease. However, in cervids like deer, moose and elk, it is spread through contact with saliva, feces and urine.
Because there are no vaccines or treatment, the disease always kills the affected animal.
The easy transmission and lack of effective prevention contributed to the inevitable spread to wild herds, but its sudden appearance across the Atlantic Ocean is concerning.
Questions abound about this case in Norway. How did the disease arrive in Norway? Was it from another cervid or is it possible the reindeer picked it up from a sheep herd with scrapie? Are there cases in captive and wild populations? Is there an outbreak or is this one reindeer an isolated case?
Only time will tell as Norway increases its investigation efforts.
Closer to home, another devastating wildlife disease has jumped from the eastern side of the continent to show up near Seattle, Washington.
The descriptively named disease of bats called white nose syndrome has killed more than six million bats and is wreaking havoc on Canadian bat populations in the Maritimes, Ontario and Quebec.
Scientists expect the condition to continue its slow expansion south and west from where it originally turned up.
This slow creep offered a glimmer of hope: if it moved slowly enough, bats from clean areas could repopulate empty bat caves and hopefully resume their place in nature, including the important role as insect eaters. And there may have been time to develop treatment or vaccinations to stop the spread.
Now that it has moved across the Rocky Mountains to the West Coast, bat populations in the middle might be stamped out on both fronts, making recovery more challenging and the extinction of threatened bat species possible. British Columbia is on high alert as the fungal disease is expected to move north into Canada’s West Coast.
How did chronic wasting disease and bat white nose syndrome suddenly appear far from their original territory?
The only logical explanation is by the actions of people. For CWD, imported animals may have carried the deadly prion disease with them or domestic sheep herds might have been the source.
As for white nose syndrome, spelunkers (cave explorers) likely picked up the deadly fungus on their shoes, climbing ropes and other equipment and deposited it in a cave on the other side of the continent.
Neither disease is a direct risk to human health, but the agricultural and economic impacts of both are substantial.
The leadership shown by wildlife organizations in both Norway and Washington is commendable.
They demonstrated clear foresight and preparedness by building the capacity to rapidly diagnose and respond to these disease threats. But for these groups, detecting the disease is only the start of what will be a long and intensive investigation.
