Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is an invariably fatal transmissible spongiform 
encephalopathy of white-tailed deer, mule deer, elk, and moose. Despite a 100% 
fatality rate, areas of high prevalence, and increasingly expanding geographic 
endemic areas, little is known about the population-level effects of CWD in 
deer. To investigate these effects, we tested the null hypothesis that high 
prevalence CWD did not negatively impact white-tailed deer population 
sustainability. The specific objectives of the study were to monitor 
CWD-positive and CWD-negative white-tailed deer in a high-prevalence CWD area 
longitudinally via radio-telemetry and global positioning system (GPS) collars. 
For the two populations, we determined the following: a) demographic and disease 
indices, b) annual survival, and c) finite rate of population growth (λ). The 
CWD prevalence was higher in females (42%) than males (28.8%) and hunter harvest 
and clinical CWD were the most frequent causes of mortality, with CWD-positive 
deer over-represented in harvest and total mortalities. Survival was 
significantly lower for CWD-positive deer and separately by sex; CWD-positive 
deer were 4.5 times more likely to die annually than CWD-negative deer while 
bucks were 1.7 times more likely to die than does. Population λ was 0.896 
(0.859-0.980), which indicated a 10.4% annual decline. We show that a chronic 
disease that becomes endemic in wildlife populations has the potential to be 
population-limiting and the strong population-level effects of CWD suggest 
affected populations are not sustainable at high disease prevalence under 
current harvest levels.