Chronic wasting disease found in northwest Wisconsin deer
By TODD RICHMOND, Associated Press
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.
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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.
(Copyright 2012 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
