AUGUSTA – To continue testing for chronic wasting disease, the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife is seeking adult deer heads from hunters harvesting deer in more than 50 towns, townships and plantations.

The slowly progressive fatal disease affects the nervous system of deer, elk and moose, according to a department news report released Thursday.

Currently, it can only be diagnosed from dead animals.

Locally, wildlife biologists want heads from deer shot in Albany Township, Fryeburg, Naples, Porter, Rangeley and Woodstock. Contributors are asked to keep the head refrigerated and contact a regional game office and speak to a wildlife biologist. For contacts, visit www.state.me.us/ifw/wildlife/cwdtest_towns.htm.

According to department spokesman Mark Latti, if chronic wasting disease emerges in Maine, it could seriously reduce infected deer populations by lowering adult survival and destabilizing populations.

Additionally, monitoring and controlling it is extremely costly and would divert already scarce funding and staff resources away from other much-needed programs, the report stated.

That’s why the department is taking a proactive stance.

To prevent introduction of the disease into Maine, the Legislature recently passed laws that now make it illegal for hunters who hunt and kill a deer, elk or moose in another state or province to transport any carcass parts that pose a risk of containing infectious proteins of chronic wasting disease back into Maine.

Hunters, Latti stated in the report, can only return to Maine with boned-out meat, hardened antlers (with or without skull caps), hides without the head portion and finished taxidermy mounts. If still attached, skull caps must be cleaned free of brain and other tissue.

For more information, visit www.state.me.us/ifw/wildlife/cwdfactsheet.htm.