Written by HLRBO Staff|
Last updated
Louisiana's chronic wasting disease map is now self-updating. On June 2, 2026, the Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission ratified an emergency declaration that replaced the state's static CWD Control Area with detection-triggered CWD Management Zones, each built from a 5-mile inner zone sitting inside a 15-mile outer zone drawn around a confirmed positive deer. Four zones cover parts of 14 parishes, and the next positive redraws the map without a rulemaking cycle.
The old CWD Control Area was one expanding blot, an infectious zone wrapped in a buffer, pushed outward by emergency declaration with each new positive. By the time the Legislature took it up, it covered portions of 17 parishes and reached 25 miles or more from a detection. What replaced it is four discrete CWD Management Zones, each a 5-mile inner zone sitting inside a 15-mile outer zone, with boundaries snapped to roads and waterways a hunter can see.
The Louisiana Wildlife and Fisheries Commission ratified the declaration on June 2 at its Baton Rouge meeting, after Secretary Tyler Bosworth issued it. It carries out Senate Concurrent Resolution 24, passed in the 2026 regular session, which amends LAC 76:V.137, a rule of the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries (LDWF), line by line. Louisiana law lets the Legislature amend an agency rule by concurrent resolution, so the framework hunters will hunt under this fall arrived through the Legislature rather than through the department's own rulemaking. SCR 24 does not record LDWF's position on the change, or say whether its biologists recommended the 15-mile radius; it describes the surveillance goal it imposes as one "developed by subject matter experts."
Parishes holding zone ground for the 2026-27 season are Avoyelles, Caldwell, Catahoula, Concordia, Franklin, Jackson, LaSalle, Lincoln, Madison, Morehouse, Ouachita, Tensas, Union, and West Feliciana. Louisiana has confirmed 55 CWD-positive deer since its first detection in 2022, and 52 of them, 94.5 percent, came out of Tensas Parish. The other three are single animals in Ouachita, Catahoula, and Concordia. Each of those lone deer anchors a zone of its own.
That is worth the arithmetic. A 15-mile radius encloses roughly 707 square miles, about 452,000 acres, with the inner zone accounting for about 78 of those square miles. No zone is a true circle once LDWF squares it to roads and rivers, but that is the order of magnitude one confirmed deer now sets in motion. Neither the declaration nor SCR 24 states a zone acreage; the arithmetic above is ours.
The man who moved the map is Sen. Glen Womack, who authored SCR 24 with 28 co-authors and whose district sits in the middle of the zone country. Hunters do not agree on whether the new structure is proportionate, and the disagreement is on the record. Womack told KNOE it is "a win-win for our biologists and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries to monitor." Hunter Tyler Roberts made the participation case in the same coverage: "We want in 10, 15, 20 years from now to still have young hunters and still have people in the hunting community."
The strongest version of that argument is sitting in the rule itself. Bait is not simply given back; it is conditioned on a zone hitting its sampling goal, which makes the most popular practice in the woods the lever that produces the heads the surveillance program runs on. The restricted footprint also shrinks, from 25 miles around a positive to 15, which takes ground out of regulation in the places where prevalence has never been demonstrated. On that reading, a program that hunters will cooperate with samples more deer than a stricter one they work around.
The rule that redraws itself
When CWD is confirmed in a wild deer outside every existing zone, LDWF establishes a zone around that index case immediately, by declaration of the secretary, subject to ratification by the commission at its next regular meeting. Existing boundaries move only at the conclusion of a surveillance season, and only when a positive lands outside a 5-mile inner zone. A zone comes off the map after surveillance goals are met for three consecutive seasons with no new detection. Surveillance seasons run July 1 through June 30.
Bait, supplemental feed, and hunting over bait are prohibited inside both the inner and the outer zone, with one carve-out: placement is allowed September 1 through March 31 when apparent prevalence is under 2.5 percent and the zone's surveillance goal was achieved. That prevalence figure is read off one surveillance season's samples rather than off the 55 positives Louisiana has confirmed since 2022, and LDWF states that results from a surveillance season determine baiting allowances in subsequent seasons. That is how a zone anchored on 52 detections can still come in under the 2.5 percent line. LDWF says baiting and feeding will be allowed September 1 through March 31, 2027 within all current CWD Management Zones.
Above 2.5 percent, the prohibition applies to future surveillance seasons. Miss the surveillance goal and bait is prohibited the next season until the goal is met. Above 20 percent, bait is allowed again, on the logic that containment has already failed where the disease is that established.
A surveillance goal is the sampling needed to detect CWD at 2.5 percent prevalence with 95 percent confidence, capped at 300 samples. Run the threshold against the cap and the margin is thin. At 300 samples, eight positives put a zone over the line and seven do not. Eight deer separate a legal bait pile from an illegal one across 452,000 acres.
Everywhere else, the unit is the county
Chronic wasting disease has now been detected in 37 states and five Canadian provinces in free-ranging or captive cervids, according to USGS data current to June 30, 2026. SCR 24 counts 36 states with free-ranging detections. Nearly all of them draw their CWD geography in counties, on an annual clock.
North Carolina is the clean example. The North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission set its 2026-27 surveillance areas by proclamation signed April 27, effective May 1, making Edgecombe primary after four detections, adding Halifax, Martin, and Pitt as secondary, and dropping 11 counties. Seven counties remain CWD Management Areas by rule: Cumberland, Forsyth, Sampson, Stokes, Surry, Wilkes, and Yadkin. One proclamation, one date, whole counties.
Minnesota moved on the feeding side of the same clock. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources added Becker, Clearwater, Grant, McLeod, and Meeker counties to its deer feeding and attractant ban on June 22, taking that list to 37 counties.
West Virginia went after the definition instead of the map. The West Virginia Division of Natural Resources proposed amendments to rule 58CSR69 on June 29 that would broaden "feeding" to cover natural or artificial foods, minerals, or other attractants that draw wildlife together. Its comment period closed July 27, 2026.
Those are once-a-year decisions in whole-county units. Louisiana's zones move on detection, and a self-updating map updates in whichever direction the data points, including toward more restriction.
What changes on a lease when the zone arrives
Leased ground in Tensas Parish is already inside a zone, and has been under CWD restriction since the state's first positive turned up there in 2022. The exposure everywhere else across those 14 parishes is different: ground can enter a zone between one hunt and the next, on the strength of one deer killed by someone else. The first thing that changes is carcass movement, not bait.
Whole deer cannot leave a zone. What can leave is meat, boned out or cut and wrapped, quarters with no spinal column or head attached, antlers on a clean skull plate, capes, hides, and finished mounts, each with a possession tag. Uncleaned heads move only by waiver, to a Louisiana taxidermist.
"Deer carcasses may still harbor the infectious material, and if parts from those deer carcasses are disposed of in the environment, they have the potential to cause further infection in new areas," LDWF deer program manager Johnathan Bordelon told Louisiana Radio Network.
Bait is the slower switch. Restrictions for a new, modified, or expanded zone take effect upon confirmation that apparent prevalence exceeds 2.5 percent, so a brand-new zone does not shut off bait the day it appears. The other side of the ledger holds an incentive. Properties inside a 5-mile inner zone with 40 or more contiguous acres qualify for Tier 1 enrollment in the state's Deer Management Assistance Program, or DMAP, which carries a liberalized bag limit and a longer season at no cost, and LDWF can issue a replacement tag to any hunter whose deer tests positive.
That is a real set of terms changing under a signed agreement mid-season, with no amendment and no notice period. A lease that already says who handles processing, where carcasses may be taken, whether feeders are part of the deal, and what happens if a regulation shifts does not need a phone call in November. One that says nothing does.
The terms above are drawn from SCR 24, LDWF's release, and published interviews; no private lease agreement inside a zone is described here firsthand.
The Louisiana Wildlife Federation has pressed for tighter carcass-transport rules and consistent testing in its CWD recommendations. Researchers went further. "Prions concentrate in the saliva, which is one of the more infectious bodily fluids, so bait piles can quickly become hotspots for transmission," wildlife health specialist and CWD researcher Noelle Thompson told reporters in May.
Colorado State University professor Mark Zabel went at the premise of detection-triggered geography itself. "Once you do detect an animal, the landscape has probably been contaminated for at least many months, more likely years, and you're just now playing catch up," he said.
Wherever a reader lands on that, the rule that governs the season is the one on the state agency's site, and in Louisiana that map now has a moving edge. LDWF posts each zone at the start of the surveillance season. The current one closes June 30, 2027, and that is the date the four zones either hold, grow, or lose their bait allowance.