With Chronic Wasting Disease confirmed in Saskatchewan over the last few months, We had the opportunity to talk with Iga Stasiak Wildlife Health Specialist with the Ministry of Environment to find out if the numbers have been going up or down and what to watch out for when it comes to CWD.

"We have had a real uptake for submissions for CWD testing this year. We had over two thousand heads submitted by our hunters, which is up from around 800 last year. Of that, we had 349 positives across the province, this is a relatively large number. It's almost equivalent to the number of positives over the past 20 years. A lot of this is attributed to the fact that we did test more heads this year." 

Along with the increase in confirmed cases of CWD, they have seen an increase in the movement of the disease. Iga Stasiak.

"We have identified CWD in south-central and southeastern parts of the province, so these are new areas. Previously we have only had a few detections in the southeast portion of the province. So what this is telling us for one, we are seeing CWD in new locations and this is demonstrating that it is, in fact, moving across the province also the fact that we're testing more, because we're testing more were finding more, In the locations we have found CWD this year particularly the southeast portion of the province we haven't actually had many submissions. We have only really had about a dozen submissions from each wildlife management zone, so we would like to see those numbers increase in future years to get an idea of how widespread it is in those areas."

Any hunter that hunts Elk, Deer, Moose or Caribou in Saskatchewan can submit heads for diagnostic testing. Its something they count on as they heavly rely on hunters to help support the program and give them a better idea of how widespread this disease is in our wildlife population.

Another concern about CWD is the potential for the spread of the disease through eating contaminated meat. While there have been zero documented cases of the disease being transmitted to humans it's not something they can entirely rule out. Iga Stasiak.

"There have been some concerns of perceptions, specifically about food safety. There have been no documented cases in humans but we cannot rule out the potential completely because of the nature of the disease and because there's still a lot we don't know about the disease."

While the numbers for Chronic Wasting Disease are up, the disease itself has been in the province for just under twenty years with the first confirmed case found in a captive game farm in 1996 and the first detection in wildlife was found in the year 2000.