Passport to Texas

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In June, volunteer monitoring at a captive deer breeding facility revealed an animal with Chronic Wasting Disease—or CWD. This put a halt to movement of captive animals statewide.

19— We permit the ability for folks to hold in captivity deer, for the purpose of breeding, genetic improvement, improving the quality of their deer herd. They can release the animals onto their ranches, or they can sell and trade to other facilities that are approved for releases. And part of that can be for hunting.

Steve Lightfoot, spokesperson for Texas parks and Wildlife, says under a plan finalized in August, Texas deer breeders may resume animal movement.

17— With input from stakeholders around the state, leading epidemiologists, veterinarians, deer breeders and other stakeholders, have come to the table, and expressed their issues and concerns. We factored those into the development of this plan, and I think the movement qualification standards we developed pretty much meets those needs.

The plan balances the need to minimize the risk of unwittingly allowing movement of CWD-positive deer while adopting reasonable movement qualification standards that allow qualified deer breeders to move and liberate captive deer.

15— We’re also looking at developing individual herd plans for those captive breeders to ensure that they can continue business with minimal risk of the disease impacting [additional animals]. And also, we’ll be looking at strategic sampling of hunter harvested deer once the seasons start this fall.

Find more information about Chronic Wasting Disease on the Texas Parks and Wildlife website.

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