Call for cull of urban deer

by · Castanet
A deer visibly showing signs of the chronic wasting disease.Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Confirmation of a third case of chronic wasting disease in deer in the Kootenay region has a local environmental group calling for increased funding for surveillance and testing, as well as an aggressive reduction of urban deer.

The B.C. Wildlife Federation has called on the province to allocate additional funding for chronic wasting disease — an infectious and fatal disease affecting species in the cervid family, including deer, elk, moose and caribou —after a white-tailed deer was tested as positive on Nov. 20 in the Kootenay region recently.

The sample was collected from a white-tailed deer harvested in October 2024 within two kilometres of the other case found earlier this year in a white-tailed deer near Cranbrook.

To date, three cases of the disease have been identified in deer populations in the Kootenay region, the first two cases confirmed by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency in February 2024, and both were collected in Cranbrook. One was a male mule deer harvested by a hunter, and the other was a female white-tailed deer killed in a road accident.

Chronic wasting disease is becoming more prevalent, said BCWF executive director Jesse Zeman, with Cranbrook and other towns in the East Kootenay perfect vectors for the disease as they have high densities of urban deer.

The BCWF is concerned that underfunding will hamper efforts to detect and contain this fatal disease. No additional dedicated funding was allocated for CWD in the last provincial budget, said Zeman.

“Urban deer populations in towns like Kimberly, Cranbrook and Creston need to be dramatically reduced immediately and the province needs a dedicated funding mechanism to ensure that we can adequately address this problem,” he said on Thursday.

The BCWF believes that urban deer populations should be aggressively reduced as they are a significant cause for the spread of CWD. Unfortunately, little testing has been done on urban deer populations, said Zeman.

“There is no direct evidence that the disease can be transmitted to humans and there have been no reports of cases of disease in humans,” said Akriti Tyagi, media relations with the Ministry of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship.

“However, to prevent potential risk of illness, Health Canada recommends that people do not eat meat of an infected animal,” he said. “Cooking temperatures cannot destroy the abnormal protein that causes chronic wasting disease if an animal is infected.”

Further afield

All cases to date have been found within a chronic wasting disease management zone that includes 14 wildlife management units in the Kootenay region, but outside of the Nelson and local management zones.

Measures are in place, however, within the East Kootenay zones to continue to collect data to help mitigate the risk of disease spread, the province maintains.

“Ongoing vigilance, preventative measures and enhanced surveillance are critical to managing chronic wasting disease and protecting cervid populations and the communities that rely on them,” said Tyagi.

People can keep submitting their deer samples since information gathered during the ongoing response is helping inform longer-term chronic wasting disease management, in collaboration with First Nations and other partners.

Take action

Most infected animals will not show any symptoms of the disease.

However, if anyone sees any deer, elk, moose or caribou exhibiting symptoms such as weight loss, drooling, poor co-ordination, stumbling, or generally sick with no obvious reason, report it to the 24/7 Report All Poachers and Polluters Line at 1 877 952-7277 or the B.C. Wildlife Health Program.