SASKATOON -- Chronic wasting disease (CWD) appears to be spreading in the province's wild deer population, according to Saskatchewan Environment's provincial CWD manager.
The department recently received confirmation of another case of CWD in a two-year-old mule deer buck taken this fall near Saskatchewan Landing Provincial Park, north of Swift Current.
It was the fourth case of CWD discovered in the province's wild deer. Up until this point, all of the positive cases had been found in the Manito Sandhills near Lloydminster.
"It's a new location, and obviously it has either spread from the original location, or there's any number of theories -- which would include it may be a disease which exists naturally in the wild at a low level that we haven't detected before," said Kevin Omoth in an interview on Thursday. "Or some people like to point fingers at game farms, or it could be any number of things, we just don't know," he said.
"But (what) we do know is we have a new location where we know it exists, and that is our department's job to look at and deal with."
The sample was tested at the Canadian Co-operative Wildlife Health Centre in Saskatoon, and was sent to a laboratory in Ontario for confirmation. Over the past four years, Saskatchewan Environment has tested about 5,500 samples from across the province.
CWD is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy that attacks the brains and nervous systems of cervid (deer family) animals. Nerve cells in the brains are hollowed out and the animal eventually walks in a confused manner and wastes away.
Omoth said CWD has been a problem on game farms, but there's no evidence that game farms "are to blame for things like this."
This fall, Saskatchewan Environment is once again asking hunters throughout the province to turn in the heads of animals they take for testing for CWD. Omoth said the department is also taking steps to get more samples from the particular area where the deer was taken.