Passport to Texas

CWD Deer

TPW TV -- CWD Response Team Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is Passport to Texas

The first case of Chronic Wasting Disease, or CWD, was discovered in 2012 in free-ranging mule deer in an isolated area of far West Texas. Three years later…

2015 the sky fell out. They found a positive in a deer breeding facility.

CWD is a fatal, highly communicable neurological disease in deer. Ryan Shoeneberg is a wildlife program specialist, and part of Texas Parks and Wildlife’s CWD response team. The Texas Parks and Wildlife TV series on PBS features the team on this week’s show. Paul Crossley is a license and permit specialist on the team.

There is not treatment or cure. The only real management technique we have is containment.

This meant shutting down TWIMS—the Texas Wildlife Information Management Service—the central database used to manage deer breeding in Texas. It essentially halted the transfer of deer from breeding facilities, which affected people’s livelihoods.

Our job is to nip it at the bud. Find it like a cancer. Wall it off, and not let is spread out.

The team had the job of helping breeders get deer moving again.

We were essentially given a deadline that said, look, we’ve got to get deer breeders moving again. We’ve got to get commerce going again—by deer hunting season. I think it was 57 days.

The Texas Parks and Wildlife CWD Response TWIMS Reprogramming Team took action. Find out what they did this week on the Texas Parks and Wildlife TV series on PBS. Check your local listings. The Wildlife restoration program support our series.

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

This entry was posted on Friday, June 2nd, 2017 at 12:00 am and is filed under Chronic Wasting Disease, TPWD TV, White-tailed deer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.