Informing Surveillance through the Characterization of Outbreak Potential of Chronic Wasting Disease in White-Tailed Deer

•We used a Susceptible-Latent-Exposed-Infective (SLEI) compartment model to depict outbreak behavior (R0) of chronic wasting disease (CWD) in white-tailed deer under the influence of a habitat contaminated with infectious prions.•R0 increased when indirect transmission was parameterized to scale with environmental contamination.•CWD can persist in individuals living in a contaminated environment even if transmission between deer is insufficient to sustain circulation.•CWD transmission cannot be exclusively density dependent, and must behave as either a mix between frequency and density dependent, or strictly frequency dependent.•Differential likelihood of disease outbreak can guide state and provincial wildlife managers in the allocation of disease surveillance resources.