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8-16-02
Good time to update you all on the Wisconsin situation. Below is a news article that reminded me to post this update. I talked to the head of the Wisconsin DNR's effort in the CWD control zone. He relayed that the total number positive, 24, includes 6 animals found during the June sampling and that the July data were not yet available. Thus far, in the 2 hunts already completed, about 600 deer of the 25,000 planned for removal from the eradication zone have been removed. Long road ahead of those folks and not an easy task.
Thomas J. Roffe, PhD, DVM
USGS-BRD
Northern Rocky Mountain Science Center
FWP Bldg, 1400 S. 19th Ave.
Bozeman, MT 59718-5496
T: 406-994-5789
F: 406-994-4090
Cell: 406-539-4955
Supporting Document
Weekly News Bulletin
Wisconsin looks to halt deer disease
Wisconsin has launched its third weeklong summer deer hunt in an effort to stop a deadly brain disease that has infected a herd in the southwest corner of the state.
The state Department of Natural Resources targeted an estimated 25,000 deer in a 374-square-mile area after 24 animals tested positive for chronic wasting disease this year. The cases marked the first time the disease had been detected east of the Mississippi River.
The first two hunts this summer killed a total of 601 deer, according to the DNR. The third hunt started Saturday, and a fourth hunt is scheduled to begin Sept. 7. Officials hope the deer remaining in the eradication zone will be killed during the regular deer hunting season that begins in late November.
"We don't want it to spread to our neck of the woods,'' hunter Ross Noak said Saturday as he and a friend, Scott Klinger, unloaded a doe and three fawns at a DNR checkpoint in the rolling countryside just outside Barneveld.
Chronic wasting disease -- an incurable, brain-destroying illness that causes deer, elk, moose and caribou to grow thin and die -- is related to mad cow disease in cattle and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. Experts say there is no evidence that chronic wasting disease can infect humans, however, the World Health Organization has said people shouldn't eat any part of a deer with signs of the disease.
DNR officials hope wiping out the infected herd will preserve Wisconsin's rich deer-hunting tradition. The sport annually attracts 700,000 hunters who spend nearly $9 million on it a year, according to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service survey.
"To do nothing is just not an alternative,'' DNR spokesman Greg Matthews said. ``The alternative is the Wisconsin deer herd crashes.''
Source: Associated Press
August 11, 2002
U.S. Department of the Interior | U.S. Geological Survey
URL: http://biology.usgs.gov/cro/CWD8-16-02.htm
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