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Policies for more information. CWD is a serious neurologic
disease affecting elk, white-tailed and mule deer. Although it
has been associated with captive deer and elk in the past, CWD
has more recently been found in free-ranging white-tailed deer
in the Midwest. This disease has been a serious concern for a
number of western and plains states for the last several years
and has now been found in free-ranging white-tailed deer in
Illinois and Wisconsin. Although the methods of transmission are
not completely known, evidence suggests that infected animals
may transmit the disease by animal-to-animal contact or by
environmental contamination. CWD is always fatal to the infected
animal and there is only a limited diagnostic test available to
detect CWD in live animals. While CWD is related to other well-
known diseases, such as scrapie in sheep, bovine spongiform
encephalopathy (mad cow disease