Chronic wasting disease found in wild New York deer for first time in decades

Theo Wells-Spackman is a Report for America corps member who reports for VTDigger.

Chronic wasting disease, a fatal illness in deer, moose and elk, has been discovered in a wild New York doe for the first time in decades.

The disorder, which stems from defective proteins called prions, has never been spotted in Vermont, and with northern New York’s deer season in full swing, officials want to keep it that way.

Following the discovery of the infected animal, the Vermont Department of Fish and Wildlife issued a statement Tuesday reminding hunters to follow policies against bringing deer meat without proper processing into Vermont from areas where the disease has been observed. Those include New York, Pennsylvania and Québec, among other states and provinces.

“It’s a really funky kind of disease,” Nick Fortin, the department’s lead deer biologist, said in an interview. It’s in the same class of disorder as the infamous “mad cow” disease, he said, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.

In deer, chronic wasting disease causes symptoms like emaciation, listlessness and disorientation. It has never shown the potential for animal-human crossover, Fortin said, though people should not eat infected deer. His worry about the disease is centered on Vermont’s deer and their habitats, he said.

“Those prions that cause CWD can remain in the soil for decades, essentially,” Fortin said. “The persistence is the biggest concern.”

The malformed proteins in question can outlast the deer they kill and be stored in the earth, scavengers’ waste and even in surrounding plant life, he said. 

Other states have struggled to control the fatal disease’s spread in deer and elk. Nearly 15% of all deer and elk tested in Wyoming returned a positive CWD result in 2024, with one herd in particular registering about 66% average infection rate over the course of five years.

New York state officials discovered the CWD-riddled deer last week in Livingston County, nearly 300 miles from the Vermont border, during an annual testing program. The disease had not been detected in New York since 2005, save for one captive deer in 2024.

Fortin said Vermont hunters commonly disregard state policy about transporting deer across state lines — including from New York.

“We hear about it anecdotally all the time,” he said.

Successful hunters can bring back parts of deer under certain conditions, including if the meat is packaged and labeled correctly or is boneless, or if a person is transporting cleaned teeth or antlers.

Essentially, Fortin said, “We let hunters bring back the parts that they’re not going to dispose of on the landscape.”

Vermont’s regular deer hunting season runs Nov. 14 to 29, and the season in northern New York runs Oct. 24 to Dec. 6.

Read the story on VTDigger here: Chronic wasting disease found in wild New York deer for first time in decades.