An elk harvested near Pruitt on the Buffalo National River during the October 2015 hunting season tested positive for chronic wasting disease, according to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission.
This is the first time an animal in Arkansas has tested positive for the disease, which is fatal to elk and white-tailed deer.
In 2006, the Commission created a CWD response plan as the disease began appearing in other states.
“Arkansas proactively took measures to put a testing procedure in place and created an emergency CWD plan,” said Brad Carner, chief of the AGFC Wildlife Management Division. “Those precautions are now proving to be beneficial. We are in a strong position to follow the pre-established steps to ensure the state’s valuable elk and white-tailed deer herds remain healthy and strong.”
To determine how prevalent the disease may be, samples from up to 300 elk and white-tailed deer combined within a 5-mile radius of where the diseased elk was harvested will be tested.
There is no reliable U.S. Department of Agriculture-approved test for CWD while the animals are alive. The AGFC will work with the National Park Service and local landowners to gather samples for testing.
A multi-county CWD management zone will be established, and public meetings in the area will be scheduled to discuss plans and answer questions.
The number of positive samples collected, if any, will help AGFC biologists determine the prevalence of CWD, and will guide the strategy to contain it.
“Although CWD is a serious threat to Arkansas’s elk and white-tailed deer, we are not the first to deal with the disease,” said Mike Knoedl, AGFC director. “Our staff is prepared and, with help from the public, will respond with effective measures. We have learned from the experiences of 23 other states.”
Biologists don’t know how the disease reached northern Arkansas at this point. The local herd began with 112 elk from Colorado and Nebraska, relocated between 1981 and 1985.
“CWD would have raised its ugly head a lot sooner than now,” said Don White, a wildlife ecologist at the University of Arkansas Agriculture Experiment Station in Monticello. “I think that it’s extremely unlikely that it came from those 112 elk.”
Biologists have tested 204 Arkansas elk for the disease since 1997; the 2 1/2-year-old female was the only one with a positive result. The AGFC also has routinely sampled thousands of white-tailed deer across the state since 1998.
Samples from the diseased female elk were tested at the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory in Madison, and verified by the National Veterinary Services Laboratories in Ames, Iowa.
There are no cases of CWD transmission from cervids to humans or to livestock.