Spatial Ecology and Chronic Wasting Disease Dynamics of Wild White-tailed and Mule Deer in Northern Colorado

The Animal Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) Wildlife Services, National Wildlife Research Center (NWRC) anticipates awarding $413,380 in cooperative agreement funding to support one project that addresses the funding priorities to investigate chronic wasting disease (CWD) as a population-limiting factor in Northern Colorado mule deer and white-tailed deer and to better understand the relationship between CWD, other pathogens, and other causes of mortality that limit deer numbers. The activities performed below will also support the development and optimization of live tests for CWD. This work supports the mission of Wildlife Services by providing federal expertise in managing conflicts between people and wildlife. To initiate this project, NWRC will provide financial support for collaborative research with the awardee.

These funds are provided to support the following activities:

• Capturing wild deer, deployment of GPS collars, and antemortem sampling of capture deer for CWD and other pathogens

• Monitoring of deer in the field and responding in a timely manner to mortalities to coordinate with NWRC on postmortem investigations

• Cleaning, organizing, and sharing GPS collar data

• Analyzing samples from live and dead animals

• Conducting spatial analyses using GPS collar data

• Preparing reports, white papers, manuscripts, and presentations for the dissemination of study findings

This study will coordinate with similar studies in neighboring states so that similar designs are used and the data can be analyzed as one large dataset. Specifically, the cooperator will capture, collar, sample, and monitor ~30-40 mule and ~30-40 white-tailed deer from the same population. The cooperator will collect biological samples including tissue biopsies, swabs, blood, feces, and hair at the time of capture following the NWRC CWD Project sampling protocol. Following capture, activities performed by the cooperator include monitoring of GPS collars and responding in a...