Chronic Wasting Disease doesn’t seem to be a big issue in Iowa

All deer samples tested during a special collection effort this winter in Allamakee County came back negative for the always fatal chronic wasting disease, the Department of Natural Resources reported this week.

'That helps us. That shows us it's not a large-scale problem at this point,” said Dale Garner, chief of the DNR's Wildlife Bureau.

Garner has called the recent CWD detections 'a spark that we hope to put out before it becomes a fire.”

The DNR had hoped to collect about 200 usable samples in a 30-square-mile area near Harpers Ferry where a wild deer tested positive for CWD during the 2013 hunting season. Three more were found this past fall from hunter-harvested deer.

Garner said volunteers from the area were able to collect only 85 samples, primarily because of bad weather.

'I would have liked more samples, but it still gives us a much better idea of the scope of the problem,” he said.

The plan going forward, he said, is to expand the surveillance area southward and collect more samples from the area during regular hunting seasons this fall and winter.

Garner said biologists hope to have the expanded surveillance zone defined by mid-April.

The samples were collected under a section of Iowa code that authorizes the DNR to issue special collection permits for scientific purposes.

During the past hunting season, the DNR tested 311 deer harvested by hunters in a five mile radius around Harpers Ferry with the three deer testing positive for CWD. More than 57,000 deer have been sampled statewide since 2002.

Garner said he suspects the infected deer crossed the Mississippi River from Wisconsin, where more than 2,800 infected deer have been confirmed since 2001.

The disease still is spreading in Wisconsin, where biologists estimate that more than 35 percent of male whitetails and more than 18 percent of females are infected.