Even if chronic wasting disease (CWD) -- lethal to white-tailed deer with no known cure -- had not shown up this spring in New York less than 100 miles from the Pennsylvania border, the ramifications of Eric Long's discovery would be exciting to wildlife managers in the Northeast. But because the finding, which will be published this week in the June issue of the Journal of Mammalogy, will provide scientists with a tool to predict how far and how fast chronic wasting disease could spread in deer inhabiting the broken forested tracts of the region, it is being considered a breakthrough.

Long, a Huntingdon resident and Penn State graduate student in ecology, has been studying the dispersal of juvenile male deer. His research is part of a joint study by the Pennsylvania Game Commission and the U.S. Geological Survey's Pennsylvania Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at Penn State.

"By scouring literature from previous research and combining that knowledge with results from our deer-dispersal study, Eric was able to establish a solid relationship between the percentage of forest cover and how far young male deer disperse," said Duane Diefenbach, adjunct assistant professor of wildlife and Long's adviser in the Penn State's School of Forest Resources. "I can tell you that if CWD shows up in Pennsylvania, this information will be crucial in determining the size of the containment zone.

For the entire story, click here.

Source: Penn State
June 7, 2005

Back to Hot Topics