State wildlife biologists plan this fall to test as many as 2,000 hunter-killed deer and elk to monitor for a deadly animal disease that has sprouted across the West but so far has missed Oregon.

Biologists expect that the tests for chronic wasting disease, or CWD, will continue to reveal no presence of the highly infectious yet mysterious disease that threatens wild deer and elk herds in other states.

The Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife wants to take small samples of brain tissue and lymph nodes from as many hunter-killed deer and elk as possible for testing this fall.

"We don’t have it here, and this is just an effort to make sure we don’t have it," said Mark Vargas, the ODFW’s Rogue Watershed wildlife biologist. "It’s also reassuring to hunters to show them it’s not here."

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Source: Mail Tribune; Mark Freeman
October 4, 2004

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