CWD, or Chronic Wasting Disease, is a disease that will only affect deer, and any other animal in the Cervid family like elk, moose and caribou.
The disease has no possible recovery and slowly kills the animal.
Years ago the disease was found among several deer in Oneida county but was contained by killing many deer.
The disease is similar to mad cow disease and how it effects the animal’s brain, causing holes, but deer may not show symptoms for up to two years. By then the disease may have spread by contact or through the environment in the form of feces, urine or saliva.
Recently, a white tailed deer tested positive for CWD only five miles from the New York border. Krysten Schuler, a wildlife disease ecologist with Cornell has said the the deer was found so close to the border that a thorough investigation must happen to ensure the infection has not spread to deer in New York.
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