In 2001, routine testing of deer dispatched during the just-completed hunting season revealed that three deer in western Dane County had chronic wasting disease. Shortly thereafter about 95 percent of Wisconsin residents learned about it and approximately 100 percent of deer hunters became aware of the problem.
The cycle is now complete, as Gov. Scott Walker was made aware of CWD just last week.
At least that’s the way it appears, as Walker has discovered new urgency about addressing what is arguably one of the biggest ecological, economic and cultural disasters in state history. Since he took office in 2011, Walker’s administration has had an official policy of “see no evil.” As a result, we’ve had seven lost years in which the disease has been allowed to intensify and spread.
As the excellent outdoor writer Patrick Durkin has reported, infected deer have now been found in Eau Claire and Oneida counties, some 170 miles from where the disease was originally discovered in Wisconsin.
At a Natural Resources Board meeting in February, Walker-appointed board member Greg Kazmierski whined about DNR staff referring to “affected” counties, which are within 10 miles of another county with a known CWD-positive deer. “Kaz,” as his fellow board members like to call him, said that “affected” sounded too much like “infected.”
Truth is, affected counties might as well be thought of as infected. That’s because deer are showing up CWD-positive despite alarmingly low rates of testing. Durkin reports that the first case was found in Lincoln County despite only 49 tests there.
In fact, of the almost 200,000 deer killed last year, only about 9,900 were tested. In the first season after CWD was discovered, over 40,000 deer were tested. That’s no accident. The Walker administration has steadily decreased emphasis on testing, which has never been mandatory, but should be. Obviously, the fewer deer you test, the fewer positive deer you’re likely to find — which is the key to Walker’s out-of-sight, out-of-mind theory of game management.
Now, in an election year, the governor has called for things he should have been doing since he took office. He is proposing increased fencing at deer farms, a recommendation of experts for years and an actual proposal from Democratic gubernatorial candidate Dana Wachs in a bill he introduced last summer. In fact, Walker has adopted so many Democratic ideas in the run-up to his bid for a third term that it seems he should be invited to speak at the state Democratic convention next month.
Frankly, while Wachs’ proposal (now stolen by Walker) is a good step, the state should go much further and ban deer farms altogether. It’s likely that CWD was imported to Wisconsin by a deer farm. When I wrote a story on CWD for Isthmus a few years ago, I interviewed former DNR Secretary George Meyer, who pointed out that CWD had been confined to a few mountain states before it popped up near a game farm in south central Wisconsin. “I know the deer didn’t walk to Wisconsin,” Meyer said at the time.
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In fact, one look at this map should set your blood boiling. It shows the incidence of CWD in the United States and it shows Wisconsin as an epicenter of the disease. See those darker counties on the map? That’s incidence before 2000. A few dots in Colorado and Wyoming and nothing east of the Mississippi River. Not a single dot in Wisconsin. Study that map and tell me that CWD wasn’t imported to Wisconsin. And the only plausible way that could have happened is from a deer escaping from a deer farm which got some of its stock of trophy bucks from mountain states.
Moreover, deer farms are all about “canned shoots” in which killers (they are not worthy of the term hunter) pay thousands of dollars to have a trophy buck trotted before them so they can murder it. The whole existence of these places should be an affront to every Wisconsinite, and they should be held criminally liable for their part in inflicting suffering on our deer herd and their leading role in what could be an eventual collapse of the $2 billion dollar industry and cultural centerpiece that is Wisconsin deer hunting.
But don’t expect Walker to go that far. In fact, the only thing that has roused him from his disgraceful hiding place is the electoral calendar. If he wins reelection expect another four years of inaction on one of the biggest threats to Wisconsin’s environment, economy and culture.