Hunters will have more opportunities to kill deer this fall, as
Saskatchewan Environment steps up its campaign to eradicate chronic
wasting disease.
Kevin Omoth, the department’s CWD manager, said 40,000 white-tailed
deer are normally taken each year in Saskatchewan. Seven hundred
permits are also issued for mule deer, but this year, another several
hundred collection permits will also be issued.
These permits are free, but require hunters to turn in the animals’
heads for CWD testing by Saskatchewan Environment.
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“We’re trying to be pretty aggressive to see if it exists there,” Omoth
said.
CWD is a fatal brain disease similar to scrapie in sheep, bovine
spongiform encephalopathy in cattle and new variant Creutzfeldt-Jacob
disease in humans.
Since last fall, Omoth said 4,000 wild deer samples tested negative for
CWD. The three confirmed cases all came from the Manito Sand Hills
region near Lloydminster.
Saskatchewan Environment shot 185 deer in the area in April, including
a mule deer, now confirmed as the most recent case of CWD. Meat from
most of these culled animals was salvaged and distributed to food banks
and Indian communities, Omoth said.
He said high priority areas for the provincial eradication program
include Hillmond, Paradise Hill and Mudie Lake near Pierceland, where
three game farms have been identified by the federal inspection agency
as highly contaminated.
As CWD is considered a disease that occurs in and slowly spreads
throughout a local area, Omoth is not concerned about CWD in the
general provincial deer herd.
“While we’d like to never get another positive in Saskatchewan, it
wasn’t a huge surprise to find another positive in that small area.”
Omoth expects the testing and surveillance will continue, because an
area or farm is considered CWD-free only when no cases surface during a
five-year period.
