IOWA – The Iowa DNR is releasing a series on chronic wasting disease, to provide the latest information and online tools to one of our most important partners – Iowa’s deer hunters.

This series will be released in four parts ahead of the opening of Iowa’s gun deer season. The topics include:

–Sampling and Testing Iowa Deer

-New Chronic Wasting Disease Response Plan

-Deer Management

-Importance of Deer Hunting

New Chronic Wasting Disease Response Plan

In 2025, the Iowa Department of Natural Resources (DNR) published a new Iowa CWD Response Plan (2025-2030) that outlines the history, policy, surveillance, and management efforts associated with the disease in Iowa. The Iowa CWD Response Plan (2025-2030) is available online at www.iowadnr.gov/deerhunting.

The Iowa DNR began collecting tissue samples in 2002 after chronic wasting disease was found in Wisconsin and Illinois, with an initial goal of obtaining 2,000 samples; 500 from Allamakee, Jackson, Dubuque and Clayton counties, and 1,500 from the rest of the state. In those early days, test results could take anywhere from three to six months.

In 2010, the Iowa DNR and the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship produced a preliminary plan, outlining sampling methods, free-range/captive herd responsibilities and response protocols in the event a deer tested positive. In 2013, Iowa found its first positive deer, an adult buck from Allamakee County.

With that first positive, the DNR’s surveillance kicked in – additional deer were harvested and tested in the immediate area where the positive was found, public meetings were held during the winter to provide hunters and landowners with information on the future surveillance and to answer questions.

The timing of Iowa’s first positive detection allowed the DNR to consider results of different techniques used in other states, from aggressive removal to a hands-off approach, to manage the disease on the land. Ultimately, the DNR settled on a pragmatic strategy of avoiding overabundant deer populations through voluntary hunter harvest.

“We produced a comprehensive response plan intended to serve as a blueprint to showcase how we’re currently responding to CWD in the state,” said Jace Elliott, state deer biologist, with the Iowa DNR.

“Our hope is the public sees it as a measured, moderate approach to managing an extremely difficult challenge,” he said.

There is no cure for chronic wasting disease and infected deer can spread the disease for years through saliva, urine and blood left on the landscape, and through direct contact. While much remains unknown about the disease, it poses a significant threat to the health and quality of Iowa’s deer population in the future.

“We appear to be in a relatively early stage of the disease,” Elliott said. “We have hotspots in the northeast (Allamakee, Clayton, Dubuque) and south-central (Wayne, Appanoose) with several other counties that only have one or two detections.”

In the early years, the disease starts with a small number of positives, then undergoes exponential growth over time. Iowa’s rise in chronic wasting disease prevalence and geographic spread has been similar to that in other states.

“It can take a couple years for this disease to physically impact an individual deer, and decades to potentially impact a deer population,” Elliott said. “Our goal is to minimize the transmission of the disease by managing balanced deer populations through voluntary hunter harvest. By collecting samples statewide every year, we’re able to evaluate disease dynamics over time.”

Up next…Part III: Deer Management.