MADISON, Wisconsin – More and more cases of chronic dieback occur in deer and elk farms and in hunting ranches in Wisconsin. At the same time, the state has backed down on rules and procedures designed to limit the spread of deadly brain disease from its captive and wild deer.

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 landmines. 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.

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The Wisconsin Information Center, Wisconsin's investigative journalism center, has provided this article to the Associated Press as part of a collaboration with the Institute for Nonprofit News. .

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Bryan Richards, a national expert on MDC, said the current Wisconsin approach of allowing facilities housing CWD-infected animals to continue operating poses a serious threat to the population of the country. wild deer from this state, which has seen more than 4,400 deer infected since the first case of this disease in 2002.

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

According to DATCP records, nine MDC positive cervid treatment facilities are still in operation – seven of them have been affected by new MDC cases on their properties.

"The existence of MDC in these facilities constitutes a clear, persistent and probably increasing risk for the integrity of wild deer on the other side of the fence," said Richards.

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 … out 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 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.

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 priced between $ 4,000 and $ 9,000 each, with an option for a "gold hunt" – at no cost – that promises deer with 200-inch woods, points including.

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 to check if 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 found themselves in this landscape, we suddenly started to have positive results."

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 let the positive facilities for the CWD continue to operate was "a very interesting and very different philosophy change from what had been done before in the rest of the country".

In May, Walker announced a series of actions to slow the spread of MDC. He called on the DATCP to develop an emergency rule requiring a reinforced fence and prohibiting the removal of live deer from the 55 counties of the state listed as having CWD, which means that one infected deer would have been detected there or within 10 miles of the county.

Despite this, the DATCP Citizens Council, made up of Walker appointees, decided to take no action at the governor 's request for urgent 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 reviewed agencies' regulations, voted in favor of removing restrictions on the movement of deer carcasses. .

The emergency closure rule of the DNR allows the industry until September 2019 to comply with it. 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 would come into effect "before or very close to the expiration 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 Game Reserve owner Scott Goetzka of Warrens said the cost of compliance would be "basically legislation that would force you to stop doing 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 – its 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.

"There are still many unknowns that make predictions about the long-term evolution of MDC resistance difficult," according to an article co-authored in June by Michael Samuel, emeritus professor of ecology of the Wildlife at the 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.

The Wisconsin Information Center, Wisconsin's investigative journalism center, has provided this article to the Associated Press as part of a collaboration with Institute for Nonprofit News.