Fish and game to discuss chronic wasting disease next steps

Nov. 20—Idaho Fish and Game commissioners will meet Monday to consider potential next steps after the discovery of chronic wasting disease — a fatal and contagious illness affecting deer, elk and moose — near Lucile.

The Idaho Department of Fish and Game set up check stations Friday on U.S. Highway 95 near Cottonwood and New Meadows and one near Stites on State Highway 13. Agency officials are asking deer and elk hunters in Game Management Unit 14 and adjacent units to stop at the stations where they can have their animals tested. Hunters may also bring animals to regional offices for testing. The heads and/or extracted lymph nodes are required to detect the disease. The tests cannot detect the illness in meat alone.

Two mule deer killed on public land in the Slate Creek drainage last month tested positive for the illness that has infected herds in 25 other states and a few Canadian provinces but had not previously been documented in Idaho.

The ailment, which is in the same family as mad cow disease and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, can significantly reduce the abundance of deer, elk and moose, and carries potential health concerns for hunters. While it has never been documented to infect humans, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that people not eat meat from animals with the disease.

Monday, the Fish and Game Commission will consider designating a chronic wasting disease management zone, setting up an emergency hunt to facilitate additional testing of animals in the area and establishing a chronic wasting disease surveillance zone.

Don Ebert, the Fish and Game commissioner representing the Clearwater Region is encouraging hunters to have their animals tested.

"I think sportsmen can help us a lot," he said. "We need to know where it is and what the extent of it is."

Toby Boudreau, chief of the agency's Wildlife Bureau at Boise, said the surveillance zone could include units 11A, 13, 14, 15, 18 and 23. If established, the agency would place special emphasis on collecting samples from those units.

The management zone would be smaller but carry legal restrictions such as banning the removal of the carcasses or certain parts of deer, elk and moose from the area. Exceptions are made for meat that is cut and wrapped, quarters or deboned meat absent of brain or spinal tissue, edible organs that do not include brains, hides without heads, upper canines, finished taxidermy, dried antlers and cleaned and dried skulls or skull caps.

The disease is believed to be caused and spread by misfolded proteins known as prions. Studies suggest the prions can persist for 2 to 16 years in the environment. To prevent spread, the agency is already asking hunters in Unit 14 to quarter out their animal and leave the heads and spinal columns in the field. If they wish, hunters can take the heads to check stations or to region offices for testing and disposal.

Boudreau said a hunt may be designated to further surveillance efforts and would likely include the agency working with hunters to ensure samples are representative of various age classes and both male and female animals. It would require all animals taken in the hunt to be tested and for hunters to record the precise locations of their kills.

"We want to collect enough samples to say something statistical about what is going on but we don't wan't to kill more deer than we have to," he said. "I'm confident we could do that with the help of the public."

Boudreau said the agency was able to take samples from about 30 animals Friday at the check station near New Meadows.

Brian Brooks, executive director of the Idaho Wildlife Federation at Boise, is urging members of Idaho's congressional delegation to support the Chronic Wasting Disease Research and Management Act sponsored by Rep. Ron Kind, D-WI. The bill would distribute about $70 million annually among states where the disease is present and be used to help fund both management actions designed to mitigate CWD outbreaks and for research into the disease. Brooks said passage of the bill would bring in much-needed financial support.

"It will cost tens of millions of dollars a year if we want to maintain our herds and our sporting opportunity, and Idaho doesn't have the funding required."

The offices of Reps. Mike Simpson and Russ Fulcher, both Idaho Republicans, did not respond to questions about the legislation Friday.

The wildlife federation is also asking the state legislature to require increased CWD testing of elk farms in the state and to require those farms to have fences high enough to prevent animals escaping or wild animals entering the enclosures.

Dan Blanco, a former Fish and Game Commissioners from Moscow, urged current commissions and the agency to hold public meetings about CWD as soon as possible and to take steps to ensure testing remains widely available and free.

Information on testing and how to extract lymph nodes is available at idfg.idaho.gov/cwd.

On Friday, the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife added Idaho to a list of states and provinces from which carcasses of deer, elk and moose may not be imported. Exceptions are made for meat that has been deboned; skulls and antlers; antlers attached to the skull plate; upper canine teeth from which all soft tissue has been removed; hides or capes without heads attached; and finished taxidermy.

Barker may be contacted at ebarker@lmtribune.com or at (208) 848-2273. Follow him on Twitter @ezebarker.