Among many interesting things, of particular interest to me in the informational meeting they held in Vancouver last month is that the spike in reports happened in 2008 after almost two decades of sporadic reports. They sampled animals in early 2009 and then, according to them, did no further samples until 2013. Really? Huge spike in reports and they only sampled animals once in 4 years? Either someone is incompetent, lazy, or they did do samplings in 2010, 2011, and 2012 and found things they didn't want to find.
This whole thing is blowing up right now in front of us. We need to maintain the pressure on the DFW and we need to pound our state reps on the issue to make sure that they know that this is not only a horrible disease for our wildlife, but quite possibly a serious public health issue that if ignored can result in severe illness, destruction of internal organs, and death of our citizens. The DFW should immediately retract its position that the elk are safe for human consumption because they still don't know what's causing the problem, supposedly.