Passport to Texas

Passport to Texas with support from the Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program

The New Mexico Department of Game & Fish contacted Texas Parks and Wildlife earlier this year with some concerning news:

18— Back in February of this year, we received a call from NM Game & Fish, notifying us that they had detected CWD (Chronic Wasting Disease) in three of four hunter harvested deer within 2 miles of our border in the Hueco Mountains. So, that certainly grabbed out attention.

Mitch Lockwood, Texas Parks and Wildlife big game program director, says the state’s management strategy for dealing with Chronic Wasting Disease has been updated to include three zones: containment, where the disease is known to exist; high risk, where no infected animals have been discovered, but the likelihood is high; and…

14 – Adjoining the high risk zone is an area we call the buffer zone, which is an area of less risk when compared to the containment zone or high risk zone, but there’s still an elevated risk of CWD occurring there as compared to the rest of the state.

This week the Texas Parks and Wildlife commission will consider a proposal to prohibit transport of deer in and out of the containment zone… limited transport of deer from captive facilities in the high risk zone with increased testing of animals…and it would also allow for the trapping and transport of wild deer in the buffer zone.

05 …but not until an adequate number of CWD tests have been performed for that population.

And what about hunters who harvest deer in these zones? We’ll tell you about that tomorrow.

The Wildlife and Sport Fish Restoration Program…supports our series and funds diverse conservation projects throughout Texas…

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.