In northeastern Louisiana, white-tailed deer living along the Mississippi River inhabit a unique landscape shaped by human engineering and periodic flooding. Historically, this region was dominated by bottomland hardwood forests, some of the Southeast’s most productive deer habitat. However, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, large-scale timber cuts transformed this forested, fertile floodplain to primarily agriculture. The lower Mississippi River sees annual cycles of flooding. Past extreme flooding events have periodically wreaked havoc on communities and commerce along the river. As a result, in the early 1900s, massive engineering works of extensive levee systems were constructed along the river to control flooding.  

The lands between the Mississippi River and the levee system, also known as the batture lands, are unprotected from flooding. This thin, untamed strip of land holds some of the remnant bottomland forests, forested regrowth following logging, sloughs and swamps, and other habitats suited to flooding. Over time, river channelization has increased river discharge and, along with the levee system, concentrates water that would have otherwise spread into the river’s natural floodplain, resulting in greater flooding within the batture than was historically observed.  

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) was first detected in Louisiana in 2022 and is one of the biggest threats to white-tailed deer across the United States. CWD is a fatal, neurodegenerative prion disease found in most deer species, with no known cure. The current Louisiana CWD Control Area is located in the northeastern portion of the state along the Mississippi River. The spread of CWD is linked to movement patterns of infected deer, and understanding deer movement behaviors is critical for management of CWD. Longer distance movements by deer, such as dispersals, may play outsized roles in transmitting CWD to new areas. A dispersal is movement from where an animal was born to its adult home range.