This hunting season there’s a lot more testing for a disease that’s killing deer in parts of the Great Lakes region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
This hunting season, there’s a lot more testing for a disease that’s killing deer in parts of
the Great Lakes region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Chronic Wasting Disease is similar to Mad Cow Disease. In this instance, it attacks deer
and elk, causing them to waste away, become disoriented, and eventually die. It’s been
found in captive animals in Minnesota, in the wild deer population in Wisconsin and just
recently a deer in Illinois was found to have Chronic Wasting Disease. Carol Knowles is
with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources. She says about 4,000 samples of
tissue from deer are being taken during the hunting season. They’ll be sent to labs to see
how far the disease has spread in that state. But because the labs are being swamped with samples, it
will take a while before anything is known.
“It will take months to get all of those results back, yes. But we hope to expedite the ones in northern Illinois where we know we had at least one
confirmed case.”
Other Great Lakes states are also testing for Chronic Wasting Disease in their deer herds,
hoping to stop the disease from spreading quickly.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.