New funding from the Saskatchewan government will help officials continue to monitor the spread of chronic wasting disease, says the executive director of the Canadian Cooperative Wildlife Health Centre.
The province recently announced a research grant of up to $170,000 for the centre.
The CCWHC, with the co-operation of the environment ministry, operates a surveillance program for the fatal brain disease that affects wild deer, elk and moose, as well as a database of the test results from samples submitted by hunters.
“That’s the main source of our information, samples from hunter-killed deer in the areas adjacent to where we know where it is,” said Ted Leighton.
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“But actually, we need to ramp up our sampling in areas where we don’t think it is….”
The environment ministry says 350 of 47,580 samples have tested positive for CWD in the province since the late 1990s.
“If you go to the what I call the epicentre, the area where we’ve been studying this intensely, it’s 50 percent, and it’s the most common cause of adult mortality in wild deer in those areas,” said Leighton.
“That’s going to have a huge effect on population over time.”
He described the epicentre as the area around Lake Diefenbaker. CWD is also known to exist west of North Battleford and further north in the Lloydminster and Nipawin areas.
“We know it’s spreading. It’s already spread into Alberta and it’s marching across Alberta slowly,” said Leighton.
“It’s a slow-moving disease…. it’s now in Saskatchewan on the eastern side, so it’s slowly working its way towards Manitoba.”
The Alberta Livestock and Meat Agency has also funded CWD research, spending $805,163. Joint funding from the Alberta Prion Research Institute has allowed six projects to split $1.3 million.
There is no evidence that CWD is transmitted to humans, but consumption of infected meat isn’t recommended.
Earlier this year, federal funding wasn’t renewed for PrioNet Canada, which administered research into CWD and BSE, including projects at the University of Saskatchewan, as well as diseases affecting humans.
“It’s really just left to the provinces, and I think we can be very pleased, I guess, that our province considers this a sufficiently important issue that it is continuing to support it in a fairly substantial way,” said Leighton.
