BACKGROUND: Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a contagious, fatal prion disease 
affecting cervids in a growing number of regions across North America. Projected 
deer population declines and concern about potential spread of CWD to other 
species warrant strategies to manage this disease. Control efforts to date have 
been largely unsuccessful, resulting in continuing spread and increasing 
prevalence. This systematic review summarizes peer-reviewed published reports 
describing field-applicable CWD control strategies in wild deer populations in 
North America using systematic review methods. Ten databases were searched for 
peer-reviewed literature. Following deduplication, relevance screening, 
full-text appraisal, subject matter expert review and qualitative data 
extraction, nine references were included describing four distinct management 
strategies.
RESULTS: Six of the nine studies used predictive modeling to evaluate control 
strategies. All six demonstrated one or more interventions to be effective but 
results were dependant on parameters and assumptions used in the model. Three 
found preferential removal of CWD infected deer to be effective in reducing CWD 
prevalence; one model evaluated a test and slaughter strategy, the other 
selective removal of infected deer by predators and the third evaluated 
increased harvest of the sex with highest prevalence (males). Three models 
evaluated non-selective harvest of deer. There were only three reports that 
examined primary data collected as part of observational studies. Two of these 
studies supported the effectiveness of intensive non-selective culling; the 
third study did not find a difference between areas that were subjected to 
culling and those that were not. Seven of the nine studies were conducted in the 
United States.
CONCLUSIONS: This review highlights the paucity of evaluated, field-applicable 
control strategies for CWD in wild deer populations. Knowledge gaps in the 
complex epidemiology of CWD and the intricacies inherent to prion diseases 
currently pose significant challenges to effective control of this disease in 
wild deer in North America.