Quote:
Originally Posted by wind drift
I get that we want to believe that a pervasive and fatal disease won’t have a devastating effect on susceptible species, but that’s just wishing and ignoring the basic data about spread and prevalence. Info is easily found here:
https://www.alberta.ca/chronic-wasti...es#jumplinks-0
The most startling info is the maps that show the progression of the disease:
https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/ac89...o-2019-map.pdf
https://open.alberta.ca/dataset/5337...ule-deer-2.pdf
It’s not witchcraft to suss out that 50% prevalence and a two year lifespan for any infected mule deer buck will mean damn few will get old and big.
This disease isn’t going away. The only way to slow spread is reduce transmission rates, which is driven by deer density. Alberta tried to cull, but the public howled and that ended. Using hunting to reduce herds won’t work when hunters stop wanting to kill deer that just wind up testing positive and get discarded to the landfill. It sucks. At least I was able to experience the great mile deer hunting we had in the 90s. |
I don’t think anyone doubts CWD has an effect on deer numbers. What most question is if the management plan of greatly reducing deer numbers is more damaging to the population with limited impact on stopping the spread