Alberta wildlife officers plan to shoot 50-75 deer this week after a mule deer in east-central Alberta tested positive for chronic wasting disease.
It is the first time a wild deer has tested positive for CWD in Alberta, said Dave Ealey, spokesperson for Alberta’s sustainable resource development department.
“Our intent is to try and find any more deer in that vicinity and remove them,” said Ealey. He estimated there are up to 75 deer in the area where the infected one was discovered, 30 kilometres southeast of Oyen at the end of July
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It was shot after a member of the public noticed a thin deer and called wildlife officials. Part of its brain was sent for testing. Initial tests were positive and were later confirmed at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency laboratory in Ontario.
There have been three cases of CWD found in game-farmed white-tailed deer in Alberta, but this is the first case of a wild deer with the disease. In Saskatchewan, 68 wild deer have tested positive.
The disease passes from one animal to another, but it is not known how. It affects the central nervous system and brain, causing the animal to slowly waste away.
The CWD-positive deer wasn’t near areas of Saskatchewan where positive deer have been found. The closest CWD-positive deer in Saskatchewan was 140 kilometres away, Ealey said.
The deer was found in a corridor between the Red Deer River and the South Saskatchewan River that runs between the two provinces.
“It likely entered through this travel route.”
This spring wildlife officials shot and killed 486 deer around Chauvin after a Saskatchewan wild deer with CWD was found close to the border.
Ealey said the department plans to double or triple the number of tags available to hunters in the Oyen area as another way of culling and testing more deer for CWD.
Alberta began its surveillance program of wild deer and elk in 1996.
