10 Years Into Wisconsin's CWD Epidemic, Democrats Demanding Actual Response From DNR, Walker
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The DNR's reaction remains a sore spot among hunters. The agency immediately adopted a plan that called for reducing the local herd to slow the disease's spread, employing sharpshooters and asking hunters and landowners to kill as many deer as possible in the area. The strategy turned into a public relations disaster. Landowners and hunters refused to get on board, calling herd reduction unattainable and a waste of deer. A 2006 audit found the number of deer in the area had actually increased.
The DNR has since turned to a strategy of testing dead deer for the disease, tracking the disease's locations and gauging its prevalence. Texas deer researcher James Kroll backed up those tactics in a 2012 review of Wisconsin DNR policies he produced for Republican Gov. Scott Walker, saying the state should take a passive approach.
DNR Wildlife Health Section Chief Tami Ryan told the Assembly's natural resources committee that the disease continues to spread, noting that 20 percent of bucks and 9 percent of does in the Mount Horeb area now have it. The disease zone has grown to include southeastern Wisconsin, she said, adding that the agency has recorded localized outbreaks in the state's northwestern and central regions. "We continue to see the disease increase in intensity and geographic distribution," she said. "We have not been able to contain the disease."
That left minority Democrats on the panel shaking their heads. They pointed to a letter University of Wisconsin-Madison wildlife ecologist Tim Van Deelen sent to state Rep. Fred Clark, D-Baraboo, earlier this month that called the DNR's passive approach "nothing more than a decision to let the problem grow in order to avoid controversy rather than to commit to more experimentation with disease control and eradication."
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http://www.sfgate.com/news/science/article/Wis-Democrats-say-DNR-must-do-more-to-stop-CWD-5075566.php
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