September 2023 - 5

MAILBAG
GLOSSARY OF TERMS
Throughout this special issue there are several
words you may need to know to have a better
understanding of the topic.
Age structure: The distribution of animals by
age within a population. Often expressed as relative
numbers of animals by given age categories, such as
fawns, yearlings, mature animals or by individual
ages.
Antlers: The bony growths on a male deer's head.
They're sometimes called horns, but horns do
not fall off like antlers. Deer, elk and moose have
antlers.
Buck: A male deer.
Cervids: A mammal of the family Cervidae - deer
family- which includes white-tailed deer, mule
deer, elk and moose.
Cheatgrass: An annual grass native to Europe,
southwest Asia and northern Africa, but has become
invasive in many areas - including Wyoming.
Chronic wasting disease: A chronic, fatal
disease of the central nervous system in mule deer,
white-tailed deer, elk and moose. CWD belongs
to the group of rare diseases called transmissible
spongiform encephalopathies, which are caused by
abnormally folded proteins called prions.
Clinical signs: Something abnormal relevant to
disease in an animal, and detected by an observer.
Animals are considered to have clinical signs instead
of symptoms.
CWD endemic area: Geographic area in which
animals affected with chronic wasting disease are
found.
CWD-positive: The designation for an animal
determined to have been infected with the chronic
wasting disease prion.
CWD prevalence/prevalence rate: The
percentage of cervids in a herd unit or hunt area
that are chronic wasting disease-positive at a point
in time or over a specified period of time, is based
on an adequate sample size and is well distributed
across the herd unit based on animal distribution.
Doe: A female deer.
Environmental contamination: The process
whereby prions shed from carcasses or from live
animals via urine, feces and saliva, enter the environment
and remain infectious to cervids.
Epidemiology: The incidence, distribution and
possible control of diseases and other factors relating
to health.
Fawn: A deer born in the spring of the same calendar
year.
Forb: A herbaceous flowering plant other than
a grass.
Free-ranging: Refers to cervids that are not
confined within a high fence and are able to move
freely across the landscape.
Herd unit: The delineation of a population of
big game animals bound by natural geographic
or human-made barriers that restrict interchange
with adjacent populations to less than 10 percent
of the population's size. Hunt areas are established
within herd units to achieve harvest objectives and
to distribute hunting pressure.
Juvenile: A deer that is less than 1 year old.
Lymph node: A small, bean-shaped structure
that is part of the body's immune system. Lymph
nodes filter substances that travel through the
lymphatic fluid. They contain lymphocytes (white
blood cells) that help the body fight infection and
disease.
Mature: A deer is considered mature by most
when it reaches 3.5 years old.
Monitoring: Efforts to track changes and prevalence
of a disease once detected within a population
over time.
Obex: The section of the brainstem between the
brain and the spinal cord frequently used to test
for chronic wasting disease.
Population dynamics: The changes in population
size and the factors affecting whether a
population is stable, declining or expanding.
Prion: An abnormal protein particle that is the
cause of brain diseases such as chronic wasting
disease. Prions are not visible microscopically,
contain no nucleic acid and are highly resistant
to destruction.
Riparian: An area that is the interface between
land and a river or stream.
Surveillance: Efforts to detect the occurrence
of a disease within a specific species and geographic
area where the disease has not yet been
documented.
Targeted surveillance: Efforts to detect the
occurrence of a disease within an individual animal
exhibiting clinical signs of the disease.
Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies
(TSEs): Diseases caused by abnormal forms
of prions that convert normal cellular proteins to
abnormal prions. The net effect of this conversion
is the formation of plaques of protein in nervous
or lymphoid tissue, which eventually create spaces
or " holes " in that tissue.
Velvet: Living tissue that covers the development
of deer antlers in the spring and summer.
Wildlife-friendly fencing: A fence designed to
contain livestock while still allowing wildlife to
pass through without harm or delayed movement.
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wyo.gov or Wyoming Wildlife, 5400
Bishop Blvd., Cheyenne, WY 82006.
Please include your name, city and
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typographical errors and length.
Letters selected for publication
represent the volume received on any
given topic and their relevance to
recent issues of the magazine.
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E-EDITION
Visit wgfd.wyo.gov/magazine and
click on " manage your account "
to access the Wyoming Wildlife
e-edition.
CORRECTION
In the July 2023 issue of Wyoming
Wildlife on page 41, the photo
of a walleye was taken by Eric
Engbretson and not Patrick Clayton.
Wyoming Wildlife | 5
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September 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of September 2023
