Report From WSU Vet School, Wolves can help stop spread of CWD

[Mustangs Rule]

The Vet School at Washington State University is one of the most highly respected in the west. They are now studying not just CWD but have begun doing reasearch on Elk Hoof Rot in the Pacific Northwest. The article below could not be more recent. December 3- 21. I wish them well in their research,

Chronic Wasting Disease

CWD expert: Wolves & hunters can help minimize spread of deadly protein​

WSU researcher Margaret Wild shares some basics on CWD, which recently was detected in north central Idaho​

• By Eric Barker of the Tribune
• Dec 3, 2021 Updated Dec 3, 2021

“We showed hunting can help keep the prevalence of chronic wasting disease somewhat in check, but selective removal of deer by a coursing predator like a wolf actually really brought the prevalence of chronic wasting disease down in these populations and got it down to almost undetectable levels.”

CWD expert: Wolves & hunters can help minimize spread of deadly protei...

Chronic Wasting Disease

lmtribune.com

https://vmp.vetmed.wsu.edu/research/elk-hoof-disease

 

[TheTone]

Computer model….

 

[Hammsolo]

I actually have experience with building computer models, as many of you may have. I know it sounds stupid, but it’s a good first step. It takes time and skill to create quality models, but it’s much quicker than field work. No, they aren’t as powerful as valid field studies, but it can help with making decisions about engineering more effective field studies to reduce wasted time.

She seems pretty level headed. Hell, I know how to stop EHD, blue tongue, hoof rot, CWD…. Give free guaranteed permits to all private land owners and their buddies! They can kill all of them.

 

[44hunter45]

Keep in mind that the Lewiston Tribune/Moscow Daily News once reported I had been killed in a hunting accident.

 

[3855WIN]

Seems the cure for CWD is to kill all of the deer.

 

[TheTone]

The area where Idaho just had cwd detection has a healthy wolf, lion and bear population. It also has hoof rot, lots of ehd this summer and now cwd

 

[antlerradar]

I have no doubt that wolves will pick off sick deer and elk. With their superior sense of smell that they may even be able to detect infected animals long before visible symptoms show. On the other hand a wolf pack makes a very big circle. I am no @Hunting Wife but I would bet CWD prions pass through a wolf as easily as a plum pit passes through a bear. In this way wolves that pray on CWD infected deer and elk may be helping to spread CWD.

 

[Mustangs Rule]

I have no doubt that wolves will pick off sick deer and elk. With their superior sense of smell that they may even be able to detect infected animals long before visible symptoms show. On the other hand a wolf pack makes a very big circle. I am no @Hunting Wife but I would bet CWD prions pass through a wolf as easily as a plum pit passes through a bear. In this way wolves that pray on CWD infected deer and elk may be helping to spread CWD.

What you say is true, CWD will pass though them, but what is happenning is that the CWD prions are being condensed. They are going from being found spread throughout the general deer and elk, where contagion is maximum. To being concentrated in the waste products of wolves, urine, dung and dead wolves. None of these attract prey animals, quite the opposite.

Having wovles concentrate prions in places of least contaigion for deer and elk is ideal. It is all that could ever be hoped for.

This is bio-remediation at it's best, working day and night, 24/7, all year long on private and public land, with a super honed skill to select out the weakest at the earliest stages of contagion.

Reading about massive deer kill programs in the midwest has been by and large depressing. Lots of healthy deer die and the plague of CWD goes on and on.

I have read about the sussessful elimination of a newly discovered small localized outbreak of CWD in New York State. They used hunters and gave them credit for the successful elimination.

The ignored factor in this success story is the presence of a large number of very large northern coyotes fully capable of filling the predator role of wolves in selecting out CWD sick deer.

Human hunters cannot do this until a deer or elk are terribly ill and have long been at a maximim stage of contagion.

 

[RobertD]

I have no doubt that wolves will pick off sick deer and elk. With their superior sense of smell that they may even be able to detect infected animals long before visible symptoms show. On the other hand a wolf pack makes a very big circle. I am no @Hunting Wife but I would bet CWD prions pass through a wolf as easily as a plum pit passes through a bear. In this way wolves that pray on CWD infected deer and elk may be helping to spread CWD.

I bet that is the case since it's a prion thing

I think a lot of people fail to realize that a prion can live through so much more than a virus or bacteria. I'm sure that includes having its host eaten by a wolf.

What say ye @Hunting Wife. Will the prions pass through the wolf "like a plum pit?"

 

[TrumpkinTheDwarf]

The idea that wolf feces will repel deer and elk for the years necessary to let the prions die is laughable. Within a week or two predator scat loses its scent enough that it isn't going to have an impact on deer movement. Wolves are going to spread prions everywhere they go. It isn't like the woofs have a private restroom just for their prion filled bowel evacuations.

 

[RobertD]

This is bio-remediation at it's best, working day and night, 24/7, all year long on private and public land, with a super honed skill to select out the weakest at the earliest stages of contagion.

It sounds good but again, all they did was use a computer model. Meaning, unless I'm mistaken, they have zero real world data on this actually happening.

It feels like if this were really bio-remediation at its best, we'd see a visible disparity in CWD rates in wolf areas vs non-wolf areas already

 

[Mustangs Rule]

Feds Will Spend $70 Million Per Year to Fight Chronic Wasting Disease If CWD Act Passes

Conservation groups say the swift passage of the bill through the House is proof that the federal government is taking the disease seriously.

www.outdoorlife.com

Getting federal aid to fight CWD will be of great help. One of the things which will be done will be fullly examining research and bio-remediation conclusions from WSU and other highly regarded current sources of information and research.

THat will bring in current science and could dispell old stuck, non functioal prejudices.

That predators could be a one size fits all solution for CWD or PNW elk hoof rot everywhere is pure fantasy. THese human caused diseases have spread too far, wide and deep. Where they have just gotten started however is a different equation,

There are a few situations and places where the predators could be the only workable solution. Any sane hunter should be grateful for this possibily/probability.

Remnmber the saying, "The enemy of my enemy is my friend". THe biggest enemy of hunters are wildlide diseases.

 

[MarvB]

Maybe they should forget the wolves and just bring in Andrew Fauci…

 

[Mustangs Rule]

THe same goes for bighorn sheep and prion based diseases too

Bighorn sheep may be at risk for TSEs

A U.S. Geological Survey study indicates bighorn sheep may be susceptible to transmissible spongiform encephalopathies found in domestic and wild animals that share the sheep’s western U.S. habitat.

www.avma.org

 

[Deleted member 28227]

The ignored factor in this success story is the presence of a large number of very large northern coyotes fully capable of filling the predator role of wolves in selecting out CWD sick deer.

To my knowledge there is no scientific proof of any predator selecting animals sick with any disease.

Selecting easiest to kill, of course.

Correlation not causation.

 

[Hunting Wife]

Since I have certain people on “ignore”, I don’t see these threads.

But, to answer the questions posed…yes, prions will pass right through a predator, same as they do through a deer, or an elk. The type of animal is irrelevant…those prions will pass through and sit in the environment long after that poop pile has disappeared. Any distinction between prions going through wolves are good, while those going through deer are bad is nonsensical. Might there be a different pattern of distribution? Probably. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Who knows.

CWD positive animals are more likely to die due to almost all causes than CWD negative animals. That includes predation. Not surprising, and I’ve posted links to these papers elsewhere. But I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…I am highly suspicious of the notion that predators are a silver bullet. We already know that CWD positives very rarely survive to actual end stage disease in wild situations. I’ve seen no evidence to suggest that CWD positives are MORE susceptible to predation than they are to other causes of death, which seems to be the major assumption being made here. According to other research, they are dying 6 months to a year early due to ALL causes, in which case predation is no more effective than any other cause of mortality at slowing CWD.

Models are all well and good…my former boss had a saying that “models are never right, and only sometimes useful”. I don’t quite take it to that degree, but you can not ignore the empirical evidence playing out right before our very eyes. CWD is spreading in areas that have high numbers of wolves. Fact. It’s happening. We are watching it in real time. When the model doesn’t jive with real-world empirical data, it is obviously missing something.

 

[TOGIE]

what's their assumption on the rate at which wolves target ailing animals?

i sure hope their input wasn't 100%. i seem to recall @BuzzH exploding on some Nancy on here and posting a bunch of pictures of deer shot over the years that have survived for likely years in the presence of predators without legs and stuff.

then factor in the fact the most cwd infected animals hardly show any issues.

then factor in the colorado district wildlife manager that somewhat recently explained how it's plausible wolves can be a vector, even if a minor one, of cwd on the landscape.

then factor in margins of error and i'd imagine at the end of it all the results should really be "in theory wolves could reduce cwd prevalance but in reality rates will likely stay similar and reduced deer density will decrease transmission rates to some degree. therefore things jsut largely stay the same and there will be fewer infected animals because there are simply fewer deer"

i feel like the theory and modeling is sound but may not be robust enough to really see reality. can't forget how screwy things get even more when some reporter is now explaining it.

CWD is another area where i currently just feel like we're totally effed.

 

[Hammsolo]

“We showed hunting can help keep the prevalence of chronic wasting disease somewhat in check, but selective removal of deer by a coursing predator like a wolf actually really brought the prevalence of chronic wasting disease down in these populations and got it down to almost undetectable levels.”

Dogs have been known to detect cancers,

View attachment 204855

I have never seen or heard of dogs being able to detect a prion disease, CJD, Kuru, FFI, GSS etc. I've heard about studies regarding Alzheimer's... so I'd say plausible a wolf could detect it.

Generally speaking though I think they are smelling, stool/urine/blood at close range. I think in studies dogs are given a bunch of urine samples to identify, not put in a gym with 100 people and asked to find the cancer patient.

Further, in my experience CWD does not make an animal any more "killable"... possibly late stages?. So I find it suspect that a wolf would target CWD deer over healthy deer, obviously impossible for humans.

I'm assuming the computer model was showing normal predation v. prevalence messing with take percentages, i.e. if you kill 30% of the deer a year you reduce prevalence by x factor. Seems to suggest they were saying if you remove x infected deer you reduce spread by y factor.

Therefore, I think this study while interesting clouds the issue. (Unless it's being misconstrued and population reduction in general is the finding) @huntingwife what's your read?


We have seen pretty startlingly high prevalence of CWD on my in-laws place. We didn't test until it became mandatory, and so far are 2/5 bucks tested, with 2 pending.

One of the CWD bucks, my FIL watched him for 4 months... never saw anything out of the ordinary. Maybe just early stage on this 3.5 year old? There is currently a deer acting weird on their place, we've been wondering if we could get CPW to either issue a damage permit or come take it and then test the deer.

View attachment 204856
View attachment 204858
View attachment 204859

Gorgeous buck. So sad. It sounds crazy at first, but I wonder if you could train hunting dogs to track it? What if the state worked with hunters to train dogs and issue special permits? I’d be down to give it a shot. JLS has the skills. We could pinch dog ears in the park during training and get vilified!

We also could modify roombas to navigate the wild and sense prions! The could vacuum them up. We would need them in 4 wheel drives all chained up of course.

I’m half-kidding. Point, we need to think creatively.

 

[Mustangs Rule]

Maybe they should forget the wolves and just bring in Andrew Fauci…

Here is a 11/21 study from the Texas Dept. of Health Serivices. The unvacinated have a 20x greater chance of dying from Covid that those vaccinated. This information is in line with data coming from all over the country, with reports showing that the unvaccinated are really dying at rates 10x, 15x and even greater than those vaccinated fully.

There was one report from England saying that the vaccinated were actually dying at greater rates, but upon examination is was proven to be intentional misinformation.

https://www.dshs.texas.gov/immunize/covid19/data/Cases-and-Deaths-by-Vaccination-Status-11082021.pdf

 

[TOGIE]

okay nvm, this thread's a waste of time.

luckily did learn a few things before it shat its pants.