Staff at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) haven’t gotten much sleep since March. The worst nightmare a wildlife agency in a deer-rich region like Texas with its 3.9 million wild whitetail deer and 85,000 captive breeder deer could possibly imagine now ranges the landscape: Chronic Wasting Disease.
Since late March, the department has found evidence of 30 cases of the disease, with no known cure, in six deer-breeding facilities in the state, raising fears that it could spread at game ranches and even among wild deer populations.
Read more from James William Gibson with Earth Island Journal here.