B.C. wildlife and hunting groups are urging the government to support a large cull of deer in and around Cranbrook in an effort to stop the spread of a chronic wasting disease outbreak that could threaten the larger provincial deer population.
Both the BC Wildlife Federation and Hunters for BC called for quick provincial action to contain the spread of what is known as “zombie deer disease” after a fourth case was found near Cranbrook this week.
“Those deer are a really high-density population in close proximity to each other and they represent a really significant risk,” said Jesse Zeman, executive director of the wildlife federation. “So we’ve got to get some data, which means going in and harvesting probably a fairly high number of deer.”
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a nervous system infection that affects deer, elk, moose, caribou and other members of the cervid family. It has spread to more than 30 U.S. states and several Canadian provinces, including Alberta and Saskatchewan.
Highly infectious among animals, the disease always results in death. There is no vaccine.
‘We need to do some targeted removal, ASAP’
British Columbia has been testing for the disease for years. But concern increased significantly when the first two cases were detected in the province in January, followed by a third in November and a fourth this week. All were found near Cranbrook; three were white-tailed deer and one was a mule deer.
The risk is, if CWD is allowed to spread, it could quickly infect B.C.’s wider deer population, leading to deaths and widespread damage to wildlife as seen in other jurisdictions, like Saskatchewan.
Zeman said there are likely more than 400 urban deer in and around Cranbrook and the nearby town of Kimberley, where CWD is a concern.
He estimated a cull of at least 100 deer per city — which could be done via trapping, with the meat of clean deer utilized as food (the public is not advised to eat CWD-infected deer).
Typically, the disease is found after hunters kill a deer in the wild, because they are required to to submit samples for white-tailed and mule deer harvested in certain at-risk areas. But in towns and cities, where hunting is prohibited, the frequency of testing drops sharply unless, say, a deer happens to be hit and killed by a vehicle.
“I think in the cities, given we have three cases really close to Cranbrook, we need to do some targeted removal, ASAP,” said Zeman.
“Part of the issue is that the deer are migratory. They are going to leave in the spring, so if we don’t get a handle on it now, and we have animals that get infected and disappear into other places, we have a problem.”
A large cull of urban deer would require municipal and provincial approval. Zeman said some people in town, who have grown fond of the deer, don’t want to see them killed.
Without cull, disease could spread throughout SE
The B.C. government promised in July to work with the Ktunaxa Nation and local governments to develop a plan to test urban deer for CWD, with the goal of expanding testing this fall and winter.
Randene Neill, B.C.’s new minister of Water, Land and Resource Stewardship, was not available for comment. Her ministry provided no new information on its efforts this week, including whether that expansion in testing occurred, or whether it supports a wider cull.
Cranbrook mayor Wayne Price did not return a request for comment on the municipality’s stance on a cull.
The fear is that a major infection around Cranbrook could spread to the entire southeast as deer migrate through the Kootenay region, with some going to the east others west to Kootenay Lake and more travelling to Montana.
“You can visualize how this can spread without a handle on it.”
Jesse Zeman
B.C. hunting organizations are both trying to make sure hunters comply with mandatory testing, while also encouraging them to still hunt.
“As a hunter looking to harvest meat specifically for feeding families, it’s one of those things that plays in the back of your head, maybe I should take my hunt elsewhere,” said Evan Holmgren, a director of Hunters for BC, a non-profit hunting and wildlife preservation group.
“Which is not great because we get less samples, less testing done and less of an idea of how that disease is travelling throughout the corridors.”
Both groups express general satisfaction with the speed in which government officials are turning around testing results — at this point, within three weeks. More than 3,200 samples have been processed since August.
But they say the province needs to dedicate more resources to get a handle on the CWD issue before it’s too late.