• January 1967: Chronic wasting disease first identified as a disease in captive mule deer at the Colorado Division of Wildlife Foothills Wildlife Research Facility in Fort Collins, Colo.
• February 1978: CWD officially classified as a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, like scrapie in sheep and goats, mad cow disease in cattle and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans.
• September 1981: The Colorado Division of Wildlife identified CWD in a wild elk, marking the first documented case of CWD in a wild animal.
• February 1996: CWD found in a Saskatchewan farm elk - the first time outside of the Colorado-Wyoming CWD zone.
• February 2001: South Dakota discovered CWD in wild white-tailed deer for the first time.
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• February 2002: First CWD confirmed in a Wisconsin wild whitetail deer.
• August 2002: First CWD in Minnesota confirmed in an Aitkin County elk farm.
• September 2005: First CWD confirmed in a wild moose in Colorado.
• April 2006: University of Wisconsin researchers discover CWD prions adhere to soil and can infect new animals for years, maybe forever.
• October 2006: Colorado researchers find CWD prions can be transmitted through saliva and blood.
• December 2008: Researchers find CWD prions are shed in the feces of early-stage CWD-infected deer.
• December 2009: First CWD confirmed in a wild deer in southwestern North Dakota.
• January 2011: Minnesota's first documented case of CWD in a wild deer in Olmsted County, near where a CWD-positive elk was found on a farm the year before. No other CWD-positive deer have been found since in that area.
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• January 2016: A CWD-positive deer confirmed at a Crow Wing County farm, where all the deer eventually perished due to CWD. So far, no wild deer have tested positive in the area.
• July 2017: Canadian scientists reveal CWD was transmitted to monkeys that were fed infected meat or brain tissue from CWD-infected deer and elk.
• November 2018: CWD confirmed in a wild deer in Houston County many miles from any other infected sites in Minnesota.
• December 2018-February 2019: North Dakota Game and Fish Department in December confirms first CWD-positive deer in northwest North Dakota, where a mule deer buck shot in November in Divide County tested positive. Combined with two additional positives in southwest North Dakota, that brings total confirmed CWD cases in North Dakota to 14. Minnesota DNR holds several special hunting seasons to cull and test more deer near where CWD-positive deer have been confirmed. Federal sharpshooters called in to kill and test more deer in the area.
Sources: Minnesota DNR, North Dakota Game and Fish Department, Wisconsin DNR, Wildlife Management Institute, Cwd-info.org, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Quality Deer Management Association.
