More and more cases of chronic debilitating disease appear in deer and elk farms and hunting ranches in Wisconsin, just as the state has implemented rules and procedures designed to limit the spread of the disease deadly brain among its deer in captivity and wild.

Since 2013, when the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP) started letting certain captive deer facilities with infected animals in operation, new cases of CWD have been reported in these areas. facilities, according to interviews and documents obtained under public registers of the state. Law.

The overall state strategy for limiting MDC is inconsistent. In October, several months after Governor Scott Walker announced "aggressive new actions" against the MDC, lawmakers had rejected an emergency rule to prevent hunters from moving deer carcasses from counties affected by deadly brain disorder.

At the same time, increased fencing requirements are under consideration for captive white-tailed deer and other cervids, including elk, but these proposals face stiff opposition from facility owners who claim that such a requirement does not guarantee the cessation of the spread of the MDC and could put them aside.

Bryan Richards, a national expert on MDC, said Wisconsin's current strategy of allowing facilities housing CWD-infected animals to continue to function poses a serious threat to the wild-life deer population of Wisconsin. State, which has seen more than 4,400 infected deer since the first MDC case in 2002.

Wisconsin now has more seropositive deer farms than any other state in the country, "said Richards, who works for the US Geological Survey at the National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisconsin.

According to the DATCP registry, nine CWD-positive deer detention centers are still in operation – seven of them have witnessed new cases of CWD on their properties.

"The existence of CWD in these facilities poses a clear, persistent and possibly increasing risk to the integrity of wild deer on the other side of the fence," Richards said.

But a senior DATCP official said the goal was to keep the CWD contained and removed from the wild deer population. Until 2013, herds at Wisconsin facilities infected with the CWD virus were contaminated and the sites disinfected.

The new approach "aims to mitigate the risk of moving the disease … to the outside of the fence," said Amy Horn-Delzer, veterinary program manager.

The Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say that it is not clear if this still life-threatening disease can be passed on to humans. Signs of disease in animals include weight loss, stumbling, drooling and aggression.

There are 380 recorded commercial farms of deer and elk in Wisconsin, spread in almost every county in the state. They are generally divided into two categories: livestock farms and hunting ranches.

Farms raise deer for sale at the slaughterhouse and ranches that sell hunting experiences in fenced properties. They also sell deer to other livestock farms seeking to introduce new genetic lines into their herd.

According to state records, 300 CWD tests were conducted at 24 Wisconsin farms and hunting ranches. Most of them have been discovered since 2013 – the same year that the DATCP, which shares the regulation of deer farms with the state's Department of Natural Resources, began allowing facilities infected with the MDC to continue operating.

State legislation allows authorities to test animals and, if necessary, kill the flock to prevent the spread of the disease. Owners can receive up to US $ 3,000 in state and federal funding for each euthanized animal.

DATCP Acting State Veterinarian, Darlene Konkle, said the agency was now assessing the risk on a case-by-case basis rather than applying a general policy of depopulating entire herds after detection. . Mr. Konkle stated that the DATCP was watching them closely, including prohibiting the movement or movement of live animals.

Hunting ranch open despite 84 cases of MDC

But there are exceptions to the rule.

Wilderness Game Farm Inc. operates two ranching and hunting ranches in Portage County, as well as hunting ranches in Marathon and Shawano counties. Since 2013, there have been 84 CWD cases in the Marathon County Game Ranch, called Wilderness North – the largest of all captive settlements in Wisconsin.

The ranch continues to sell hunts for between $ 4,000 and $ 9,000 each, with an option for a "gold hunt" (priced) that promises deer with 200-inch woods, points included.

Wilderness Game Emails Farm owner Greg Flees and DATCP officials show Quarantine allows Flees to move deer from his farm, which has not detected MDC in his hunting ranches. One of them, Comet Creek, in Shawano County, has undergone six positive tests for deer cervidosis screening since 2017.

In April, the authorities also approved Flees' request to move deer considered genetically resistant to CWD on the heavily infected Wilderness North property in order to test whether they were developing the disease. It is part of a research project in collaboration with a researcher from Midwestern University in Glendale, Arizona.

Flees is one of the best known names of deer farming in Wisconsin and throughout the country. He said that he did not know how CWD had found himself in his Marathon County Hunting Ranch.

"We have never had deer elsewhere than at this farm, which has never had a positive outcome," said Flees. "We installed them on this property, and once they were in that landscape, we started to have positive results for a while."

Flees said that it was possible that CWD was already on the property. A study conducted in 2015 shows that the misfolded protein responsible for MDC, known as the prion, can be absorbed from the soil by plants and infect deer.

Another potential transmission method is deer escaping from positive CWD facilities. The DATCP records indicate that 67 deer escaped from Fairchild Whitetails in Eau Claire County between 2009 and 2015, before the 228-head herd was killed. Among the escapees were two dollars drawn by hunters whose diagnostic test was positive, said the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram.

Owner Rick Vojtik, also president of the Deer Farm Defense Group, Whitetails of Wisconsin, received $ 298,770 for slaughtered animals; he told the Leader-Telegram that the herd was worth about a million dollars. In all, 34 animals were tested positive for MDC.

Richards said the state's decision to allow CWD-positive facilities to continue to operate was "a very interesting change of philosophy and very different from what has been done before in the rest of the country."

Proposed Emergency Rules – Then Discontinued

In May, Walker announced a series of actions to slow the spread of MDC. It requested the DATCP to establish a rule of urgency requiring a reinforced fence and prohibiting the movement of live deer from 55 state counties identified as having CWD, which means that an infected deer had been detected on site or within 10 miles of the county.

Despite this, the DATCP Citizens Council, made up of Walker appointees, voted to take no action on the governor's request for emergency rules. The agency is now continuing the longer and more regular regulatory process required to adopt these restrictions.

The Republican governor also called on the DNR to create emergency rules that would prohibit hunters from transporting deer carcasses out of counties listed as having CWD in unaffected counties.

The Natural Resources Council, also made up of Walker appointees, has adopted emergency rules to require a reinforced fence, including a second 8-foot fence or electric fence for white-tailed deer farms, and limit the movement of deer carcasses from counties this hunting season.

In October, the Republican-controlled Joint Committee on the Review of Administrative Rules, which oversaw agency regulations, voted against restrictions on the movement of deer carcasses.

The DNR emergency fence rule allows the industry to comply until September 2019. But the rule itself expires in February. Asked that deer farmers could simply wait to evade the obligation, DNR Policy Advisor Scott Loomans said the agency was working on a permanent rule that should come into play. force "before or very close to the end of the emergency rule".

The state DNR has estimated the total cost at approximately $ 2.1 million for all deer farms currently. Whitetails of Wisconsin, whose members strongly oppose this requirement, estimated the cost to be more than 10 times higher.

Woods and Meadow Hunting Reserve owner Scott Goetzka of Warrens, Wisconsin, said the cost of compliance would be "fundamentally a law that would dissolve you in business".

Even if farms are required to install additional fences, this might not stop the spread, Richards said. He noted that CWD had been detected in Wisconsin in a double-fencing facility.

"So, if this infectious agent can pass from the outside into a captive institution on the other side of the fence, I see no reason to think that it could not either act in the Other meaning, "said Richards.

Al Horvath of Superior, a long-time hunter and delegate at the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, is frustrated by what he sees as a lack of cooperation between the DNR and the DATCP regarding chronic wasting of the disease . Horvath, who sees himself as business friendly, said he understands that families have poured all their vital savings into their deer and elk farms.

But, he added, "I think that a person's profit potential – his potential for individual profit – is not enough to jeopardize a whole animal tradition and population."

Flees hopes that genetics will provide an answer. He worked with a researcher to breed deer using MDC-resistant markers. Flees said that in five years, he could have a resistant flock.

Other research suggests that it could be a long time before such responses are available.

"Many unknowns make predictions about the long-term evolution of resistance to CWD difficult," according to an article co-authored in June by Michael Samuel, professor emeritus of wildlife ecology at the University of Michigan. University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Meanwhile, the spread of CWD across Wisconsin continues. On November 15, another deer hunting ranch was tested positive for the disease in Portage County, bringing to 24 the total number of establishments tested positive since 2002.

This report was produced collaboratively by Wisconsin Public Radio and the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism. The non-profit center (www.WisconsinWatch.org) collaborates with WPR, the Wisconsin Public Television, other media and the University of Wisconsin's School of Journalism and Mass Communication. -Madison. All works created, published, posted or broadcast by the Center do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates.

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In Figures: Chronic Debilitating Disease in Wisconsin

380 Registered farms of deer and elk and hunting ranches in Wisconsin

24 Installations with a positive test for CWD since 2002

14 Herds of deer farms killed after MDC testing

55 out of 72 Wisconsin Counties Affected by MDC

4,400+ Wild deer killed by hunters who have tested positive for MDC since 2002

Sources: Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection and Department of Natural Resources.

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