Chronic wasting disease spreads to nine more Missouri counties as reported cases jump

Ryan Collingwood, Springfield News-Leader
Updated ·2 min read
3
MDC staff extract lymph nodes at a Chronic Wasting Disease sampling site in Bolivar Nov. 14, 2021.
MDC staff extract lymph nodes at a Chronic Wasting Disease sampling site in Bolivar Nov. 14, 2021.

There have been 409 Missouri cases of chronic wasting disease in white-tailed deer since 2012, and 117 were discovered over the past several months.

Many of the recent cases were confirmed in the Ozarks.

The Missouri Department of Conservation reported its 12-month data (July 2022-April 2023) that includes samples from 33,000 deer checked for the contagious neurological disease, which results in emaciation and death of the animal. The MDC found 117 positive cases.

The rate of cases appears slightly higher than a year ago, when 86 of 32,000 deer tested positive.

Less than 1 percent of the deer tested positive for CWD, which MDC considers "good news," but it appears to be spreading to new areas of Missouri.

"During this past year, we found CWD in a number of new counties,” MDC Wildlife Health Program Supervisor Deb Hudman said. “Cases were detected for the first time in Barton, Carroll, Dallas, Gasconade, Hickory, Livingston, Ray, St. Francois, and Sullivan counties.”

The state's first CWD case was reported in 2012 and efforts to track CWD have ramped up in recent years. Of the 33,000 deer tested this year, 19,400 were sampled as part of a MDC mandatory CWD sampling during the November deer hunting season, with voluntary help from taxidermists and meat processors. Roughly 3,500 were collected during a MDC culling operation with volunteer landowners.

Forty-one of the positive cases were found through culling. Much of the infectious protein concentrates in infected deer are found and extracted from it lymph nodes.

Missouri counties with positive CWD cases this year include: Adair (3), Barry (1), Barton (9), Carroll (1), Cedar (1), Crawford (2), Dallas (1), Franklin (22), Gasconade (1), Hickory (1), Jefferson (7), Linn (15), Livingston (1), Macon (13), Perry (4), Putnam (3), Ray (1), St. Clair (1), St. Francois (1), Ste. Genevieve (20), Stone (4), Sullivan (3), and Taney (2).

This article originally appeared on Springfield News-Leader: Chronic wasting disease spreads to nine more Missouri counties