New research pours cold water on deer disease claims, but government funded body buries the lede

The first large scale molecular study of disease threats posed by wild deer in Australia has concluded that they do not play any significant role in the transmission of key agricultural diseases.

The study was funded by the Centre for Invasive Species Solutions (CISS), which positions itself as the peak nationally funded research body for this type of work.

Much of the funding that the CISS receives is predicated on government’s being alarmed about the presence of wild deer, particularly in relation to biosecurity and livestock disease issues. Therefore, it is unsurprising (but nonetheless problematic) that the CISS would seek to ‘spin’ its own research; releasing it with the misleading headline ‘New research sheds light on feral (sic) deer as disease transmitters’. In fact, if you read the CISS article on this you will get more than half way through before you will read that this is actually good news (even then it’s issued with a caveat).

These results of the study clearly indicate that wild deer are not currently host reservoirs for Plasmodium, Trypanosoma, Babesia, Theileria or Sarcocystis parasites in eastern Australia. The study concludes that in eastern Australia, wild deer do not play a significant role in the transmission of these parasites.

Samples were taken from fallow, rusa, sambar and chital deer across eight sampling sites across Eastern Australia.

Somewhat bizarrely, both the study and the CISS report feature a highly suggestive graphic inferring a strong relationship between hog deer and domestic livestock. Hog deer were one of the two species of wild deer present in Australia that were not sampled in this study (although they are closely related to chital deer).

The accurate reporting of studies such as this are important because misinterpretation and alarmism can lead to finite research and management resources being directed into areas where it would have a negligible impact on the ground. When it comes to the pest industries ongoing efforts to re-brand wild deer in Australia however, it seems that balance and accuracy in reporting are mere collateral damage.