# Battle zone for deer disease-Eric Sharp-Freep-05-23-02



## Tom Morang (Aug 14, 2001)

Battle zone for deer disease 

Wisconsin aims to wipe out herd in area west of Madison 
May 23, 2002


http://www.freepress.com/sports/outdoors/deer23_20020523.htm




BY ERIC SHARP
FREE PRESS OUTDOORS WRITER




GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Two Wisconsin scientists are leading an effort to kill every deer in a 280-square-mile area where chronic wasting disease has been found. The outbreak in southern Wisconsin is the first occurrence of the disease east of the Mississippi River. 

Bill Vander Zouwen, wildlife chief for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, and Scott Craven, a University of Wisconsin wildlife ecologist, know that killing 15,000 whitetails will ruin deer hunting in that area for years to come. It also will destroy the deer camp where they have hunted for decades. The camp is in the heart of the disease zone. 

"We're looking at the end of the line for our camp this fall," said Craven, who chairs the university's department of wildlife ecology. "A 30-year tradition of being on the same stand on opening day is going to come to an end, and that's a tough thing to take for a deer hunter." 

Chronic wasting disease, first detected in the West, infects deer and elk. It threatens to wipe out large numbers of animals if left unchecked. 

The outbreak in Wisconsin has created concern in neighboring Michigan, where the state DNR has begun looking at ways to combat the disease. The Michigan Natural Resources Commission is considering a statewide ban of deer feeding and a limit to baiting. 

Until February, chronic wasting disease was largely a problem in contiguous areas of northeastern Colorado, southeastern Wyoming and northwestern Nebraska. Then it was found in wild whitetails in southern Wisconsin 30 miles west of Madison, an area where hunters have conducted feeding campaigns for 30 years to increase the deer population. 

Todd Malmsbury, a spokesman for the Colorado DNR, wasn't surprised to find the Wisconsin outbreak in an area where feeding congregates the animals. 

"We had a hot spot along the Boulder-Larimer County line where the rate was 20 percent," Malmsbury said of chronic wasting disease. "Feeding and baiting are illegal, but when we went in there we found the locals dumping big piles of apples to increase the deer numbers." 

How chronic wasting disease jumped over 900 miles of disease-free territory to Wisconsin is a mystery. But many researchers suspect it arrived in a sick elk or deer shipped from a Western state to a Wisconsin game farm. 

Computer simulations in Wisconsin and Colorado, where the disease was first seen in 1967, predict that unchecked chronic wasting disease would drive local deer herds to virtual extinction in 80-100 years. 

But Doris Olander, a consulting veterinarian for the Wisconsin DNR who also worked on the mad cow outbreak in England, said hunters would see drastic reductions long before then. Olander appeared before a group of 700 at an informational meeting at Southwest High in Green Bay. 

Using computer modeling with conservative estimates about how fast chronic wasting disease spreads, she found that deer would drop from 30-50 per square mile to fewer than five per square mile in about 20 years. 

One of those at the Green Bay meeting was Arnie Rudquist of Escanaba, who said he came "because I'm a deer hunter, and the Wisconsin border is only 40 miles from my camp. I know the part of Wisconsin that has (the disease) is 200 miles away, but from what I've heard at this meeting, I'm going home even more worried than when I came. 

"If Wisconsin doesn't get rid of it soon, I don't see how it can help but spread to the states all around." 

Michigan DNR officials have tested nearly 500 deer for chronic wasting disease in the counties that border Wisconsin and plan to test about 1,500 more this fall. None of the deer tested had the disease. 

The Wisconsin control plan is a scorched-earth policy that would rely on year-round shooting to kill every deer in a nine-mile radius and dump the carcasses in a landfill. 

"In 1924, the California (DNR) killed 22,000 deer in 1,100 square miles to end an outbreak of hoof-and-mouth disease, so we know it can be done," Craven said. 

But that might be easier said than done. Most infected areas in Wisconsin have 40 deer per square mile, and some have more than 100. Wisconsin hunters also face the problem of dense woodlands, where it is much harder to kill deer. 

The state planned to start a massive kill in mid-May, but that was delayed after the plan met resistance from landowners, residents worried about safety, and businesses that depend on deer hunting for income. Deer hunting is a $1-billion-a-year business in Wisconsin. 

"This is a bad idea for lots of reasons," said Richard Freund of Green Bay, who hunts in the infected zone. "For one thing, there's no proof it will work. They've been killing every deer they can in the infected areas in Colorado, and it still spread from about two square miles 25 years ago to 16,000 square miles today. And they only have five or six deer per square mile. 

"How do they think they can kill all the deer in a place like Wisconsin with 10 times as many?" 

The infection rate is about 9 percent at the core of the zone where Wisconsin wants to eradicate the disease. Inside the zone, the eradication plan has generated the same controversy the Michigan DNR provoked in the northeastern Lower Peninsula, where it tried to end an outbreak of bovine tuberculosis by reducing the deer herd by 50 percent. 

But many hunters outside Wisconsin's infected area, and many inside, support the eradication program. Vander Zouwen said the opposition is counterproductive because "you're not saving the deer as much as you're protecting the disease. If people don't take part by hunting in the infected zone, then the herd will actually grow at first and increase the speed at which CWD spreads." 

Wisconsin found the disease largely by luck. When the state decided to begin testing for chronic wasting disease, Craven was teaching disease-testing techniques to a class of undergraduates. He sent them to the nearest deer check station for field work in the firearms deer season last year. The check station was at Mt. Horeb, which turned out to be the center of the infected zone. 

After the students found three deer with chronic wasting disease, biologists checked 500 more deer and found 11 more positives, all within nine miles of the first three. 

"If we don't act now," Craven said, "in five years, 10 years, maybe 20, history and our deer hunting descendants won't think of us very kindly."


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## Hamilton Reef (Jan 20, 2000)

FYI, The Wisconsin CWD situation is changing almost daily.

Deer outside kill area had wasting disease
http://www.jsonline.com/news/state/may02/45213.asp


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## Benelli (Nov 8, 2001)

If Im not mistaken, all the MI deer tested to date for CWD were from the TB zone (1998?). Sharp referenced 500 tested along the WI border. May be some new testing that MI DNR has done since February, but I think his reference may be off, at least geographically.


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## Fierkej (Dec 21, 2001)

Benelli,

You are correct. The MDNR tested 452 deer for chronic wasting disease in 1998. These deer were from a 5 county area in the northeastern Lower Peninsula, which included Presque Isle, Montmorency, Alpena, Alcona and Oscoda counties.

The CWD surveillance plan proposed by the Michigan DNR targets 4 counties that border Wisconsin (Gogebic, Iron, Dickinson and Menominee) as well as 31 additional counties that currently contain deer research facilities and/or 10 or more captive cervid herds. The goal is to continue this surveillance for 3 years, testing 2000 deer and elk each year.


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