News Brief | Targeted hunts were supposed to curb ‘Zombie Deer Disease.’ Now what?

||| FROM THE NEW YORK TIMES |||

Over two decades, Illinois has been one of a number of states that have set up culling campaigns to slow the spread of chronic wasting disease, a strange illness that one expert likened to a “disease from outer space.”

First discovered in wild deer in 1981, chronic wasting disease has been shown to reduce infected deer herds by 3 to 20 percent a year.

Chronic wasting disease is one of a small group of known diseases caused not by bacteria, a virus or a fungus, but by a prion, an abnormal cell protein that causes healthy cells to misfold.

States have taken a variety of approaches to try to curb the disease: lengthening deer hunting season; increasing the number of deer that can be killed; requiring carcasses to be destroyed.

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