On Wednesday, the Missouri Department of Conservation issued their final 2021 report on Chronic Wasting Disease in deer. KRPS’s Fred Fletcher-Fierro has more.

First the good news, the MDC reports that it sampled and tested more than 32,000 deer for chronic wasting disease between July 2021 and April 2022.

Of the more than 32,000 deer sampled, only 86 tested positive for CWD. That’s only .002% testing positive. Those 32,000 deer bring the total number of CWD cases found in the state to 292 since the first case in wild deer was found by MDC in early 2012.

Now the bad news, CWD-positive cases in Barry, Christian, Howell, and Washington counties which accounted for eight cases total marked the first detections of the disease in these counties.

This past season deer with CWD were tracked in 18 Missouri counties. Including recent sampling efforts, MDC has collected more than 210,000 tissue samples for CWD testing since the disease was first detected in 2010. Chronic wasting disease is a deadly illness that affects deer. The disease has been found in 16 states since 1997.