AUSTIN – The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD), the Texas Animal Health Commission (TAHC) and the Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service have partnered to coordinate Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) post-mortem sample collection trainings in the Panhandle and Trans-Pecos. As part of the state’s increased CWD surveillance, this opportunity is being provided to landowners/managers, taxidermists, and veterinarians to be trained and certified by TAHC to be official CWD sample collectors.

This will be a classroom format as well as hands on training for sample collection. Trained individuals will then be able to sample harvested CWD susceptible species such as white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk, red deer, sika, etc. on their properties or for other hunters and provide those samples to TPWD for CWD testing to meet mandatory testing requirements in the Panhandle and Trans-Pecos CWD Zones. Individuals who participated last year must also attend this year’s training to receive necessary tissue sampling supplies. Space is limited to the first 50 participants for each training and registration is mandatory to attend. Please sign up as soon as possible.

Details for the trainings are below:

Amarillo
AgriLife Extension Building, 6500 W Amarillo Blvd
9 AM – 12 PM on Oct 9

Please contact James Hoskins with TPWD at (806) 420-0439 or james.hoskins@tpwd.texas.gov to sign up for the Amarillo training.

El Paso
Texas AgriLife Research Center, 1380 A&M Circle
9 AM – 3 PM MST on Nov 16

Please contact Jose Etchart with TPWD at (432) 207-2110 or jose.etchart@tpwd.texas.gov to sign up for the El Paso training.

Please visit www.tpwd.texas.gov/cwd and http://www.tahc.state.tx.us/animal_health/elk-deer/ for more information about CWD, CWD management, and CWD regulations.