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61 °F Forecast | Road Cams Saturday, October 9, 2004 Today's News | Classifieds | Autos | Homes | Jobs | Tempo | Health | Community | Home Delivery SECTIONS Home Page Local News Sports Business Obituaries Life Opinion - Politics Tempo AP News Weather Classified Archives Site Map SPECIAL SECTIONS Since We Asked Outdoor Journal Menu Guide How To Guide Wellness Connection Readers' Choice Real Estate Showcase Joy Magazine Homelife Magazine Wedding Guide Rogue Valley's Finest EXTRA Newspaper in Education Personals Movie Times TV Times E The People MARKETPLACE Find a Car Find a Home Find a Job Classifieds Place an ad eSouthernOregon Automotive Communities Entertainment Publications Recreation Calendar CUSTOMER SERVICE Frequent Questions Advertising Information Home Delivery Employment Contact Us Media Kit Network Affiliate Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend October 4, 2004 Wildlife officials will test game for disease Oregon wants to ensure that chronic wasting disease hasn’t entered the state’s deer or elk populations By MARK FREEMAN Mail Tribune State wildlife biologists plan this fall to test as many as 2,000 hunter-killed deer and elk to monitor for a deadly animal disease that has sprouted across the West but so far has missed Oregon. Biologists expect that the tests for chronic wasting disease, or CWD, will continue to reveal no presence of the highly infectious yet mysterious disease that threatens wild deer and elk herds in other states. The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife wants to take small samples of brain tissue and lymph nodes from as many hunter-killed deer and elk as possible for testing this fall. "We don’t have it here, and this is just an effort to make sure we don’t have it," said Mark Vargas, the ODFW’s Rogue Watershed wildlife biologist. "It’s also reassuring to hunters to show them it’s not here." CWD attacks the brains of deer and elk, causing weight loss and eventual death, yet exactly how it spreads remains unknown. It has been detected in wild and domesticated deer or elk in 14 states and Canadian provinces, but never in Oregon. It is related to the so-called "mad cow disease," but there is no evidence that CWD can sicken humans. Advertisement Infected animals can take up to three years to show symptoms. The only reliable test requires a dead animal. Biologists were crisscrossing the forests this weekend, the start of the fall general black-tailed buck deer season for rifle hunters in Western Oregon as well as mule deer seasons in Eastern Oregon. Though archery hunting has been open for a month and several hunts for other species have occurred, this weekend is widely considered the unofficial start of the fall hunting season. Locally, hunters also can take their animal’s heads to ODFW offices in Central Point and Gold Beach for testing. The ODFW, along with help from Oregon State University students, is also manning check stations in Lakeview, LaGrande and elsewhere across Eastern Oregon. The tests are part of a wider effort to close as many potential entry points for the disease. Already, the Oregon Fish and Wildlife Commission has banned the importation of any domestic deer and elk, and hunters can bring only processed game meat into Oregon from other states. Wildlife managers believe these steps, as well as educating hunters and others about the potential for accidentally bringing the disease here, can keep Oregon CWD-free. "We’re operating from the point that we can keep it out," said Ron Anglin, the OFDW’s wildlife division administrator. "The steps we’ve taken allow us to do that." For the disease to transmit naturally into Oregon, it would require a chain of infected animals to stretch here from somewhere like Montana or Utah, where it has been detected. Anglin considered that highly unlikely. However, states such as Idaho are less aggressive in their CWD rules, something Anglin called a "joker in the deck" that could lead to natural transmission here. The actual CWD sampling entails removing a small piece of the dead animal’s brain. It does not affect taxidermy. The sampling takes just a few minutes, and hunters will be asked to supply their hunting license number and general location of where the deer or elk was killed, said Colin Gillin, the ODFW’s state wildlife veterinarian. Hunters can assume their animal tested negative, Gillin said. The agency will contact the hunter if their animal turned up positive, he said. The samples will be sent to a lab at Colorado State University, one of just a handful of labs equipped for these tests. The testing for the season costs close to $50,000 and is paid through a federal grant, Gillin said. Last year’s tests yielded almost 1,200 samples. This is the fourth year of testing. Reach reporter Mark Freeman at 776-4470, or e-mail [email protected] Mail Tribune Home Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life Opinion - Politics | AP News | Archives | Site Map E Southern Oregon | Classified Copyright © 1997-2004 Mail Tribune. All rights reserved. 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