LaSal deer tests positive for CWD

A deer, shot on the LaSal Mountains during the muzzleloader hunt last month, has tested positive for chronic wasting disease.

This brings to 13 the number of deer in Utah that have tested positive for the disease and the eighth to come from the herd on the LaSal Mountains located east of Moab.

The deer, a 2 1/2-year-old buck, was one of several deer tested from the area, said Leslie McFarlane, wildlife biologists for the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources.

This was the second deer that has tested positive this year, and both have been from the LaSal area. Last year, six of 244 deer tested from the LaSals tested positive.

The DWR tested more than 3,100 deer from 17 of the state's 30 hunting units. There are plans to test more deer this year during the annual rifle hunt, which opens Saturday.

A map of the units that will be sampled this year can be viewed on the DWR's Web site — wildlife.utah.gov.

Of the deer found to have the disease, eight came from the LaSal Mountains, four came from the Diamond Mountains near Vernal and one near the town of Fountain Green in the central part of the state.

Chronic wasting disease attacks the central nervous system of deer and elk and is fatal to infected animals. The first positive reading in Utah came from a deer killed during the 2002 rifle hunt northeast of Vernal.

McFarlane said even though most of the deer tested with CWD came from the LaSal Mountains, "the prevalence rate is still low, somewhere around 2 percent. In Colorado, the prevalence rate in some areas is 15 percent."

Chronic wasting disease is in the same family of diseases as mad-cow disease, which has been transmitted to humans. It is also in the same group as Creutzfeld-Jakob disease, which is fatal to humans. And it is similar to scrapie, which has been around for more than 300 years and infects sheep but not humans. There is no evidence that CWD can be passed to humans.

The disease, found three decades ago along the Wyoming/Colorado border near Cheyenne, has begun to spread to other parts of the country the past couple of years. In most cases the cause has been traced to private elk ranches.