Hunters asked to shoot more deer in CWD areas
The state Game Commission needs hunters to help slow the expansion of chronic wasting disease. If the hunters don’t, or won’t, healthy Pennsylvania deer could be culled by professional sharpshooters.
A new disease management plan favors a tactic used in other CWD-ravaged states, in which deer populations are reduced in areas where the disease is expected to spread. Less contact among deer is believed to reduce the likelihood of spreading CWD.
Chronic wasting disease is not contagious to humans, but is decimating deer populations across the United States. Under the new plan, the Pennsylvania Game Commission has set up eight Enhanced Surveillance Units where biologists suspect the disease may be spreading. Special Deer Management Assistance Program permits are being issued to allow hunters to kill additional antlerless deer in those units during the 2020-21 hunting seasons. Hunters are asked to claim their harvests with the DMAP tags, then submit the heads from those animals for CWD testing.
Hunter participation is a key component of the commission’s revamped response to the disease.
“The Game Commission has a CWD Response Plan, but hunters are the real key to making it work,” Chris Rosenberry, chief of the agency’s game management division, said in a statement. “The samples they provide from deer they harvest, especially in Enhanced Surveillance Units, help us to identify where CWD exists on the landscape, at what prevalence and what management actions we need to take to control it.”
Deer head collection bins will be placed in ESUs in parts of Westmoreland, Berks, Lancaster, Clearfield,
Cambria, Indiana, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Snyder, Mifflin, Juniata, Blair, Centre and Huntingdon counties. All heads will be tested at no cost to the hunter, and PGC will contact hunters with testing results. The agency expects to collect 250300 heads from each ESU. Find the locations of collection bins at pgc.pa.gov.
“These additional tags give [hunters] even more opportunity,” said Bryan Burhans, Game Commission executive director, “and just as importantly [make them] our first line of defense in managing chronic wasting disease.”
The state’s new CWD management plan includes additional actions to slow the spread of CWD. Possibilities include extending deer seasons in ESUs, and if regulated hunting doesn’t reduce target populations in the desired numbers, the state could employ sharpshooters to do the job.
Erie algae
As predicted by climatologists, Lake Erie harmful algal blooms are small this year, extending eastward only to the Bass Islands north of Sandusky, Ohio.
Satellite imagery shows a bloom of Microcystis cyanobacteria algae growing in the western basin of Lake Erie. Dense chlorophyll has been observed at the surface, followed by the mixing of individual algal colonies and eastern movement. Toxin concentrations have remained below the recreational threshold at all locations. The bloom is not expected to reach Pennsylvania waters.
The algal blooms impact fishing by creating oxygendeprived waters. The tiny floating plants can be harmful to humans, particularly if they come in contact with open wounds. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration advises lake users to keep pets and people out of the water in areas where scum is forming.