As state wildlife officials continue to test samples collected during the 2002 deer gun hunting season, opposition grows against the Department of Natural Resources plan for eradication of deer infected with Chronic Wasting Disease.
The DNR plan calls for continued research into the breadth of the problem while authorizing sharpshooters and landowners to continuously hunt in the eradication zone.
“Basically, everybody now is sitting on their hands waiting for the test results from samples to come in every week,” said Scott Craven, chairman of the wildlife ecology department at the University of Wisconsin-Extension.
Craven said the DNR still had around 23,000 samples to test, and it has been releasing updated information every Friday.
The DNR has analyzed 16,000 of 39,000 samples taken. 58 deer have tested positive for CWD, constituting 3 percent of the samples taken. In Dane County, 31 deer tested positive, making up 2 percent of the deer sampled.
Support has been waning for the DNR eradication program since it got off the ground in June 2002. The eradication zone is an area just west of Madison where the first and largest number of infected deer were discovered.
In January, a special session conference of the DNR called for emergency rules to expedite the eradication of deer in the infection zone.
The emergency rules allow landowners to hunt deer by setting bait for them on their land.
The DNR outlawed deer-baiting in June 2002 at the request of wildlife ecologists. Without these measures, DNR officials say the herd might be too large to prevent the spread of CWD out of the infected area.
“If we get snow, shooting deer over bait in winter is a very effective deer-culling method,” said Tom Hauge, chief of wildlife management at the DNR.
Farmers and landowners have expressed their concern at having sharpshooters roaming the woods of infected areas baiting deer, despite DNR assurances.
“A potential bait site must offer safe shooting lanes and a reasonable chance of success,” Hauge said. “We’ll also pick up the carcasses on a weekly basis so all the landowner has to do is get the animal out to where we can access it.”
Craven said opposition to the DNR eradication program is gaining steam.
“What we have is well-organized landowners groups who are fundamentally opposed to the eradication strategy,” Craven said.
Tom Heberlein, a UW professor emeritus of rural sociology, said the resistance to the DNR plan has been consistent.
“This opposition surfaced a long time ago, by about June of last year, just after the DNR started its plan,” Heberlein said. “In particular, support for the eradication program has always been soft.”
The DNR is still treating CWD as a dangerous disease even though “every news story you read points out the fact the World Health Organization and many other groups have said there is no risk to humans from the disease,” Heberlein said.
“The question could be asked: what would these farmers be saying if the state deer herd was carrying around smallpox?” Heberlein said. “People out here say we like these deer, and we don’t see the social benefits of eradicating these animals.”
