Until 8 p.m. includes Twin Cities area

MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. 

Turn Up Your Support

MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Chronic wasting disease, long contained to the southern half of Wisconsin, has leapt into the northwestern part of the state, state wildlife officials announced Monday.
	

Department of Natural Resources Lands Division Administrator Kurt Thiede said test results the agency received from the National Veterinary Services lab in Ames, Iowa, on Friday evening confirmed a three-and-a-half-year-old doe found just outside Shell Lake was infected.


	Thiede had few details on how the deer was discovered. He said someone reported a sick deer to the Washburn County Sheriff's Department on opening day of the state's gun hunt in November 2011. 


DNR field staff submitted samples from the deer to agency officials in Madison in late February. Tests performed at the Wisconsin Veterinary Diagnostic Lab in early March came back positive for the disease, but the agency wanted confirmation from Ames.

	Thiede said the agency likely will ask hunters in northwestern Wisconsin to submit samples from deer they kill this fall for testing and could enact a baiting and feeding ban in the area around where the doe was found.


	Chronic wasting disease produces microscopic holes in animals' brain tissue, causing weight loss, tremors, strange behavior and, eventually, death.


	It was discovered in Wisconsin near Mount Horeb in 2002, marking the first time it had been found east of the Mississippi River. Realizing the disease could threaten the state's $1 billion hunting industry, the DNR has worked for the last decade to contain it by adopting a contentious policy calling for hunters to kill as many deer as possible in areas with infected animals and employing its own sharpshooters in those areas.
	


But hunters and landowners never bought into the effort. A state audit in 2006 declared the policy was a failure, noting that the deer population in the disease zone had grown, but the disease had largely faded from the public eye as the years passed.

Gallery

CWD scare will be with Minnesota deer hunters for a long time to come

Testing for CWD in deer turns up nothing

Environmental News

Chronic wasting disease, long contained to the southern half of Wisconsin, has leapt into the northwestern part of the state, state wildlife officials announced Monday. Test results confirm that a doe found near Shell Lake, Wis., last November was infected with CWD.

Chronic wasting disease found in northwest Wisconsin deer

Go Deeper.

Like this?

News you can use in your inbox