For the first time, Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) has been confirmed in a deer found in Georgia.
Tina Johannsen, assistant chief of game management for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, said the disease was found on a property on the Berrien-Lanier county line in South Georgia in a deer that was harvested on November 30, 2024.
"The sample was collected the next day, on December 1, and we got confirmation from the national laboratory of that positive (CWD test) this week," Johannsen said. "The other samples that have been collected from those two counties over the last five or so years have all not tested positive."
CWD was first identified in Colorado in 1967, according to information provided by the DNR, and has been slowly spreading across the country since that time. It had been spotted in every southeastern state except for Georgia and South Carolina prior to this week's confirmation of a positive case in Georgia.
CWD is a neurological disease that is caused by misfolded proteins called prions, according to the DNR. Johannsen said the disease is fatal in deer with no known cure, but there has never been a documented case of it spreading to humans.
"This is a slow-moving disease. It has a long incubation period in deer that are infected," Johannsen said. "For most of that incubation period, they will appear perfectly healthy. The symptoms and signs of the wasting don't show up until toward the end, when the deer is about to succumb to the disease."
The Georgia DNR has set up a CWD Management Area consisting of Berrien and Lanier counties near where the infected deer was harvested and is asking hunters who kill deer in that area to get the animals tested for the disease.
For hunters in Northeast Georgia, where no confirmed cases of the illness have been identified, Johannsen said it's important to take precautions when traveling to hunt in the affected area.
"The big thing for someone, let's say traveling from Gainesville down to Berrien or Lanier counties to hunt this year, is we would ask them not to transport that carcass back to Gainesville unless they're taking it to a processor who will dispose of it properly. We will be giving advice on our website for hunters on how they can properly dispose of it," Johannsen said. "Our main concern is we just want to make sure that deer from that positive area don't get discarded out on the landscape where the carcass, if it was infected, could potentially infect other deer."
Johannsen said while the DNR is taking steps to limit the spread of the disease, she said it is inevitable that CWD will spread to other nearby areas, as it has done throughout most of the rest of the country in recent decades. That could eventually include Northeast Georgia.
"It will slowly spread across the landscape," Johannsen said. "That takes years and years and years if it's just natural spread."
Johannsen said, as of now, the DNR has no plans to institute any hunting regulations because of CWD and also is not planning to conduct any herd reduction.
Anyone who sees a deer exhibiting symptoms such as emaciation, drooping head and ears, excessive drooling and abnormal behavior, is asked to contact their local game management office.
More information on the disease can be found on the Georgia DNR's website.
