The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s new chronic wasting disease (CWD) certification program for captive elk and deer herds could hasten the disease’s spread, whether the animals are privately owned “livestock” inside fences or publicly owned resources living in the wild...Fischer summarized the revisions this way: They “increase the risk of CWD, they facilitate perpetuation of CWD in captive-cervid herds and the environment, and they increase the risk of CWD transmission from captive cervids to other captive herds, as well as to free-ranging wildlife.”...“We need to get to work in exercising our political rights in trying to control the risks associated with … CWD … and with the captive-cervid industry,” Fischer said. “What’s at risk here is the health of our nation’s wildlife populations.”
