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I'm a little skeptical over the likelihood and risk of a jump to humans, but it's still a concern and damn shame. Yellowstone is the world's OG national park and rightfully considered one of America's first tier crown jewels alongside Yosemite and the Grand Canyon. For my money, it's arguably the most interesting and unique place in the world, possessing half of the entire planet's active geothermal features (geysers, hot springs, mudpots, steamvents, travertine terraces) while simultaneously doubling as North America's version of the Serengeti for apex predators and wildlife observation.
www.theguardian.com
www.foxnews.com
When the mule deer buck died in October, it perished in a place most humans would consider the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest road. But its last breaths were not taken in an isolated corner of American geography. It succumbed to a long-dreaded disease in the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park, northwest Wyoming – the first confirmed case of chronic wasting disease in the country’s most famous nature reserve.
For years, chronic wasting disease (CWD), caused by prions – abnormal, transmissible pathogenic agents – has been spreading stealthily across North America, with concerns voiced primarily by hunters after spotting deer behaving strangely.
The prions cause changes in the hosts’ brains and nervous systems, leaving animals drooling, lethargic, emaciated, stumbling and with a telltale “blank stare” that led some to call it “zombie deer disease”. It spreads through the cervid family: deer, elk, moose, caribou, and reindeer. It is fatal, with no known treatments or vaccines.
Its discovery in Yellowstone, whose ecosystem supports the greatest and most diverse array of large wild mammals in the continental US, represents an important public wake-up call, says Dr. Thomas Roffe, a vet and former chief of animal health for the Fish & Wildlife Service, a US federal agency.
Roffe had been predicting CWD would reach Yellowstone for decades, warning that both the federal government and the state of Wyoming needed to take aggressive measures to help slow its spread. Those warnings went largely unheeded, he says, and now the consequences will play out before the millions who visit the park each year.
‘Zombie deer disease’ epidemic spreads in Yellowstone as scientists raise fears it may jump to humans
Warnings that ‘slow-moving disaster’ in North America raises chances of fatal mad cow-type disease jumping species barrier
www.theguardian.com
'Zombie deer disease' concerns scientists over possible spread to humans
Scientists are raising concerns that a fatal brain disease in deer, elk, reindeer and moose may someday spread to humans following Yellowstone National Park's first case of the disease.
www.foxnews.com
When the mule deer buck died in October, it perished in a place most humans would consider the middle of nowhere, miles from the nearest road. But its last breaths were not taken in an isolated corner of American geography. It succumbed to a long-dreaded disease in the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park, northwest Wyoming – the first confirmed case of chronic wasting disease in the country’s most famous nature reserve.
For years, chronic wasting disease (CWD), caused by prions – abnormal, transmissible pathogenic agents – has been spreading stealthily across North America, with concerns voiced primarily by hunters after spotting deer behaving strangely.
The prions cause changes in the hosts’ brains and nervous systems, leaving animals drooling, lethargic, emaciated, stumbling and with a telltale “blank stare” that led some to call it “zombie deer disease”. It spreads through the cervid family: deer, elk, moose, caribou, and reindeer. It is fatal, with no known treatments or vaccines.
Its discovery in Yellowstone, whose ecosystem supports the greatest and most diverse array of large wild mammals in the continental US, represents an important public wake-up call, says Dr. Thomas Roffe, a vet and former chief of animal health for the Fish & Wildlife Service, a US federal agency.
Roffe had been predicting CWD would reach Yellowstone for decades, warning that both the federal government and the state of Wyoming needed to take aggressive measures to help slow its spread. Those warnings went largely unheeded, he says, and now the consequences will play out before the millions who visit the park each year.
