SALT LAKE CITY -- A fatal wildlife disease that affects the brain and nervous system has been found for the first time in an elk from Utah.
The Utah Division of Wildlife Resources last week confirmed the state's first chronic wasting disease case in an elk. It had already been documented in some of the state's deer.
The division also recently found that most of the bighorn sheep in the Goslin herd near the Green River in Daggett County are infected with bacterial pneumonia.
Chronic wasting disease is a contagious neurological disease that's fatal to deer, elk and moose. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers it endemic among deer and elk in Wyoming and Colorado and present in at least nine other states.
The agency said there's no strong evidence it can be passed to humans.
The female elk that tested positive was shot in southeastern Utah's La Sal Mountains in November, state officials said.
Biologists had long suspected CWD was circulating at a low-level among certain elk populations, said Leslie McFarlane, wildlife disease program coordinator for the Division of Wildlife Resources.
She estimated the prevalence rate among elk in the La Sals was likely less than 1 percent.
Still, the disease is a concern for its potential effects on herds and uncertainty about exactly how it spreads.
The state for years has been on the lookout for CWD and in 2002 started analyzing deer and elk samples often provided by hunters.
Of the 15,000 mule deer samples tested, 48 have come up positive for the disease. Most are from the La Sals.
Often the animals die from something else before the disease takes a deep hold and causes them to act strangely and begin wasting away.
The positive case with the elk won't provoke any immediate management changes in Utah, McFarlane said.
"There are not a lot of management options once you have it in your populations," she said. "It's basically now a monitor-to-see-what-happens."
In neighboring Wyoming, which confirmed its first case of CWD in a wild elk in 1986, the disease continues to spread. Prevalence rates typically bounce around between 2 percent and 10 percent in samples voluntarily submitted by hunters each year, said Terry Kreeger, chief veterinary officer for Wyoming Game and Fish.
Rates are higher in deer, he said.
Despite predictions years ago that CWD would devastate herds, there's no evidence that's happening with Wyoming's elk, Kreeger said, and only suspicions that it's driving down deer numbers.
The bighorn sheep in the Goslin herd that were found last month to be infected with bacterial pneumonia were first brought from Montana in 2004.
The population increased rapidly after the initial introduction, but a second release in 2007 didn't experience the same increase. The herd's population fell from 65 to 40 between 2008 and 2009.
Last month, a wildlife biologist in the area noticed that some of the bighorns were coughing. Lung tissue samples taken from the animals confirmed bacterial pneumonia, which can spread rapidly among the very social animals.
"We've been watching similar events unfold in Montana, Washington and Nevada," McFarlane said. "There's no known cure for pneumonia in bighorns. The good news is that it's not hazardous to livestock or humans."
Unfortunately, she said, culling the herd is the only way to keep the disease from spreading. As of Feb. 22, the DWR had killed 26 Goslin herd bighorns.
Charlie Greenwood, regional wildlife manager for the agency, said the biggest concern is that pneumonia could spread to other nearby herds. The only way to be certain that doesn't happen, he said, is to contain and kill those that are already infected.
"It's not a pleasant task, but we know if we don't get ahead of the disease, we could lose everything."
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