Disease management areas expanded, created after CWD-positive deer found

The Pennsylvania Game Commission expanded an existing disease management area and created a new one after a roadkill deer tested positive for chronic wasting disease in Jefferson County.

The change comes in the middle of archery season and about a month before regular firearm season.

CWD is a contagious disease that can spread among deer and elk. It affects the brain, nervous system and lymphoid tissues and is always fatal. It is spread from animal-to-animal through saliva, blood, urine and feces. The state Game Commission’s board last year approved a plan that focuses on prevention, management and surveillance of CWD in wild deer, not captive herds.

Commission officials on Friday announced that disease management area 3 will expand as the roadkill deer was found on the area’s northern boundary. A deer management assistance program unit was created in the Brockway area which allows hunters to take up to two additional antlerless deer in an effort to increase surveillance. More than 1,300 permits are available for that area.

Disease management area 6 was created in Clearfield, Elk and Jefferson counties because the infected deer was found within 2 miles of an elk hunt area.

“If a CWD-positive animal is found within any elk hunt zone, all elk hunt zones will become a DMA due to the behavior and longer distance movements of elk,” said Andrea Korman, Game Commission CWD wildlife biologist, in a news release.

The establishment of the areas are an effort to prevent the disease from spreading among deer and elk with the help of humans.

Disease management areas have been in place in Pennsylvania since 2012 when CWD was first found. Those zones include parts of Westmoreland, Indiana, Armstrong and Somerset. It is illegal to remove certain deer parts, including the head and spinal column, from those areas. Hunters are asked to drop of the heads of the deer they harvest from a disease management area in a collection container provided by the commission.