Abstract
BackgroundChronic wasting disease (CWD) is a contagious, fatal prion disease affecting cervids in a growing number of regions across North America. Projected deer population declines and concern about potential spread of CWD to other species warrant strategies to manage this disease. Control efforts to date have been largely unsuccessful, resulting in continuing spread and increasing prevalence. This systematic review summarizes peer-reviewed published reports describing field-applicable CWD control strategies in wild deer populations in North America using systematic review methods. Ten databases were searched for peer-reviewed literature. Following deduplication, relevance screening, full-text appraisal, subject matter expert review and qualitative data extraction, nine references were included describing four distinct management strategies.ResultsSix of the nine studies used predictive modeling to evaluate control strategies. All six demonstrated one or more interventions to be effective but results were dependant on parameters and assumptions used in the model. Three found preferential removal of CWD infected deer to be effective in reducing CWD prevalence; one model evaluated a test and slaughter strategy, the other selective removal of infected deer by predators and the third evaluated increased harvest of the sex with highest prevalence (males). Three models evaluated non-selective harvest of deer. There were only three reports that examined primary data collected as part of observational studies. Two of these studies supported the effectiveness of intensive non-selective culling; the third study did not find a difference between areas that were subjected to culling and those that were not. Seven of the nine studies were conducted in the United States.ConclusionsThis review highlights the paucity of evaluated, field-applicable control strategies for CWD in wild deer populations. Knowledge gaps in the complex epidemiology of CWD and the intricacies inherent to prion diseases currently pose significant challenges to effective control of this disease in wild deer in North America.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12917-016-0804-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
Highlights
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a contagious, fatal prion disease affecting cervids in a growing number of regions across North America
The review question used to develop the literature search was: ‘What control strategies for chronic wasting disease have been evaluated in wild deer in North America and what evidence is there that the evaluated strategies resulted in reduced disease risk measured by CWD prevalence, geographic spread or wild deer population size?’
This study suggests that long-term management of CWD in wild deer is possible and that efforts to control CWD in Canada are justified
Summary
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a contagious, fatal prion disease affecting cervids in a growing number of regions across North America. Projected deer population declines and concern about potential spread of CWD to other species warrant strategies to manage this disease. This systematic review summarizes peer-reviewed published reports describing field-applicable CWD control strategies in wild deer populations in North America using systematic review methods. Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a contagious prion disease affecting free-ranging mule deer (Odocoileus hemionus), white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus), elk (Cervus elaphus) and moose (Alces alces) in a growing number of regions across North America. The combination of direct and environmental transmission of CWD prions makes it very difficult to control this disease in wild populations. Strategies to prevent further spread include carcass regulations, restrictions on importing and raising captive cervids, and bans on feeding and baiting practices
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