So, I'll be going through a very brief summary of this regulation package that includes five regulation proposed changes. They include allowing the Massachusetts Environmental Police and MassWildlife staff to substitute confirmation numbers for metal seals, allowing the use of only synthetic or other non- deer based lures for hunting, creating a Winter Deer Season in Wildlife Management Zones 9, 10, and 11, extending the Youth Deer Hunt to include the preceding Friday. And lastly, to change the start of the archery season to the Monday following the Youth Deer Hunt.
The change to allow the Environmental Police and MassWildlife to substitute confirmation numbers for metal seals is predominantly focused on being able to enable more deer to be salvaged for cases of both road collisions as well as from agricultural damage situations. This includes all metadata that would be required from deer that would be donated to Hunter Share the Harvest in cases of Section 37 deer that are taken for property damage. And this is already a practice that we have been piloting with Environmental Police for 2 years within our licensed vendor system.
Next, I'm going to give a review of chronic wasting disease transmission. Chronic wasting disease is an always fatal disease that is spread by prions with deer. Prions are a unique challenge when it comes to disease management because they are very different than viruses or bacteria. Prions are a misfolded protein that will end up in the environment and can transmit diseases essentially indefinitely once it is in an environment. Deer can get, can transmit chronic wasting disease through direct contact by fighting or socializing between deer, as well as maternal transfer from a mother to child. They also can transmit chronic wasting disease within the environment through the consumption of infected soils and plants where prions are within the environment as well as through the contact with infectious tissues or bodily fluids within the environment. Once the deer has uptaken the prions, they go through a phase of infection and incubation. And then it takes quite some time, often two plus years before a deer will actually die from CWD. And that entire time they can be spreading CWD within the environment. One of the most important aspects of chronic wasting disease management is that a deer that is seemingly very healthy from your external view or may not have any clinical signs may actually have chronic wasting disease and be spreading that within the environment. And so that makes it very challenging to be able to both manage it from a perspective of surveillance as well as through the impact with captive cervids.
To prevent chronic waste and disease spreading to Massachusetts, we are proposing to allow the use of only synthetic and non-deer based lures in Massachusetts. As you'll see from the graph, the northeast corner of North America is the primary location left where CWD hasn't been detected, with only captive detections in New York and Quebec and essentially New England and southeastern Canada being the only portion that has not had CWD detections. For these reasons, it's imperative that we do what we can to prevent CWD from making it to Massachusetts and New England more broadly due to their impact that it would have on the population.
Prions are found in urine and in scent glands that the deer possess and are often used by hunters to attract deer for hunting. Long-distance movement of prions is the most likely mode of transmission, particularly from captive deer facilities. And these captive deer facilities that produce urine and scent glands used by the industry are one of the leading risks to Massachusetts, including to facilities like those in New York that had CWD detected within 100 miles of our northwest border. Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine are currently the only CWD negative states that don't ban deer based lures. CWD testing of products is also ineffective. So products that say that they're CWD free or have certification programs are quite ineffective at being able to actually detect CWD or ensure that they would not be spreading prions. Prions are at incredibly low concentrations particularly in urine compared to the amount of volume of liquid. The other factor in testing is that urine contains substances that can actively inhibit the RT quick reaction used for testing. The RT quick reaction is the primary mode of testing that is available that doesn't use tissues from lethally tested deer particularly from the lymph nodes.
Moving to the winter deer season. In eastern Massachusetts, we are facing rising deer densities across all of the wildlife management zones effectively east of Worcester. Statewide, we have a management goal range of 12 to 18 deer per square mile. Above 18 deer per square mile, you start to have substantial impacts on forests that stall any forest regeneration. And long-term, that can lead to a loss of forest as well as habitat for other birds, other wildlife, as well as native plants and lead to an increase in invasive species. This graph shows each of our wildlife management zones in eastern Massachusetts, including zones 9, 10, 11, and 13, and 14 being the islands up top. Zone 9 you'll see at the bottom, is just above our wildlife management goal range of 12 to 18 deer per square mile. And it has stayed this way where it's been rising just above that goal for quite some time, but is now at densities approaching those of where zones 10 and 11 were starting at the beginning of the century. Zones 10 and 11 have had continual growth for quite some time and are now well beyond our wildlife management goal range and really require extensive management to be able to bring them back within our range to ensure that we will have long-term healthy forests and habitat for other wildlife and native plants within Massachusetts.
For these reasons, we are proposing creating a winter deer season in wildlife management zones 9, 10, and 11 to meet these management needs. It would also gives resident hunters more local opportunities with deer hunting now open with various opportunities in Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New York with different seasons open through January 31st. The new license year antlered tags can be used in the season as we have done for zones 13 and 14 for their winter deer season that had their first season earlier this year. Over-the-counter antlerless deer permits will be available for purchase in wildlife management zones 9, 10, and 11 for the January season, and any unused could then be used during the following fall. Zone 9 in particular, where we don't have unlimited antlerless allocations will have an adjustment made each spring that'll be presented to the board based on the harvest from the previous fall and to account for how many unused antlerless permits are left. To put things in perspective, each of these zones has had no changes in their management over the last 3 years, and we are still meeting new highs in the harvest, even with a declining number of hunters. This season, Zone 9 made a brand new record harvest, and Zone 11 now had the second highest harvest on record.
The additional changes for within this proposal include extending the Youth Deer Hunt to include the preceding Friday to allow more time for youth to be able to hunt with adults and be able to gain those opportunities to become a more successful hunter through effectively a Youth Deer Hunt weekend. It also includes changing the start of the archery season to the Monday following the Youth Deer Hunt. This only impacts essentially three out of every seven years where there would end up a gap as there has been the last two seasons of a one week gap between the Youth Deer Hunt and the start of archery. Now it would always start the Monday following the Youth Deer Hunt.