Fillmore County Board gets reasonable
On Saturday, the Star Tribune reported that Minnesota's CWD fight was stymied by county board and veterans cemetery. Fillmore County's board, which has a history of hostility to the DNR, had refused to allow federal sharpshooters harvest deer near the Preston Veterans Cemetery.
In breaking news Tuesday, Eric Atherton reported in Fillmore County reverses course in battle against deer disease:
Last week, the Fillmore County Board didn't just refuse the Minnesota DNR's request to allow federal sharpshooters to kill deer on county-owned land near the Minnesota State Veterans Cemetery. The board also told the DNR to stop asking.
Their resolution stated that there was "no reason for the DNR to attend a future meeting" of the county board.
On Tuesday, the board reversed that position and authorized sharpshooters to work near the cemetery — but not on it — as part of the ongoing effort to eliminate or at least slow the spread of chronic wasting disease.
Despite the board's earlier "unvitation," DNR conservation officer Mitch Boyum attended Tuesday's meeting and explained that more than half of the CWD-positive deer found in southeastern Minnesota have been killed within one mile of the veterans cemetery.
"It would be different if we were talking five miles away, six miles away, but we're not," Boyum said. "We're talking right here in the heart of ground zero of the disease. It's pretty concerning to the wildlife health folks, so we ask you to reconsider your decision."
Recent helicopter surveys of the area revealed a herd of more than 100 deer that until now has been largely inaccessible to both recreational hunters and federal sharpshooters.
Concerned citizen Bonita Underbakke said Fillmore County can't afford to simply pretend the problem will go away on its own.
"It makes sense that Minnesota does not allow discharge of firearms upon or over grounds of any public or private cemetery," she told the board. "But it also makes sense to consider the predictable result of transforming our veterans cemetery into a preserve for diseased deer to multiply and spread CWD."
Also speaking during the public comment period was John Zanmiller, a member of Bluffland Whitetails Association who emphasized that deer hunting has a huge impact on Fillmore County's economy.
"There's a lot of orange that comes over that hill in early November every year," he said. "If CWD continues to grow without aggressive action, we'll see impact at our hotels, our taxidermy shops, our sporting goods shops and even our diners."
He also pointed out that the county's tax base could suffer if the disease continues to spread, stating that recreational property declines in value by 15 percent in CWD-infected areas.
"If a large class of property in your county loses 15 percent of its value, that translates into a real amount of revenue from tax-assessed properties," Zanmiller said. "That's going to have to be reallocated to other people, entities and properties."
Board chairman Duane Bakke came to the meeting with a resolution in hand, ready to reverse the previous week's decision. He also told the board and spectators that he had communicated with the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs, which gave the board the green light to do whatever is necessary on and around the cemetery.
If we made a decision different than we made last week, they would not be opposed to that," he said. "They recognize that the area the DNR feels they can control the spread is in that area next to the cemetery. They would prefer to have CWD eliminated, because if not, it will continue to be a yearly issue for them to deal with on their property, also. They recognize that and basically accept whatever decision we make."
The final vote to allow sharpshooters on county land was 3-1, with District 1 Commissioner Mitch Lentz opposed. He expressed frustrations about the county's past dealing with the DNR, and also said that shooting deer near the cemetery won't explain why chronic wasting disease is so prevalent there.
Read the rest at the Post Bulletin. The paper's editorial board weighs in today with Our View: Deer disease should concern all Minnesotans, after considering news coverage of "zombie deer:"
. . . more than 40 wild deer have tested positive for CWD in southeastern Minnesota, and the Minnesota DNR is engaged in a no-holds-barred battle to halt its spread. It’s now a two-front war, because in mid-February, the DNR announced that an infected deer had been found near Brainerd, which is the first occurrence in a wild deer in northern Minnesota.
DNR Commissioner Sarah Strommen came to Rochester last week to discuss CWD with hunters, scientists and landowners, and she said that while she was somewhat surprised by Osterholm’s strong statements, she also could see some benefits from them.
“He has raised public awareness of this issue, and he highlighted some of the fears that I have heard from deer hunters about whether venison is safe to eat,” she said. “We just need to balance the real concerns and potential impacts of CWD, while not wanting to scare people out of the woods and away from deer hunting.”
Gov. Tim Walz joined the battle. His budget proposal includes nearly $5 million in additional funding for the DNR, all of it earmarked for CWD surveillance, testing and eradication. That’s for the next two years, and Walz also wants continuing CWD funding after that of $1.1 million annually.
This would mark the first time that the state’s general fund helped the DNR in what is a crucial battle to save our state’s deer herd, our hunting culture and the economic impact of deer hunting. Right now, CWD-related costs are borne by hunters and anglers who buy licenses.
That needs to change, so we support the governor’s proposal. The health of our state’s wildlife is important to all Minnesotans, so we should all help pay to protect it.
Brainerd Dispatch: A public meeting in Merrifield
In the Brainerd Dispatch, Gabriel LaGarde reports in DNR meeting: Residents butt heads over deer farm's culpability in CWD's spread:
"Hey, Lou!" a man shouted from the back. "What came first? The CWD, or the deer farms?"
Lou Cornicelli, a wildlife researcher with the Minnesota Department of Resources, could only brush off the question and move on—another question with no easy answers in a meeting filled with them. A gathering of roughly 300 people Monday, March 4, packed themselves into The Woods' event center, just off County Highway 3, south of Merrifield.
With the Jan. 23 discovery (and Feb. 14 confirmation) of a carcass bearing chronic wasting disease—a degenerative neurological disease that inevitably ravages the brain and emaciates the body—by Upper Mission Lake, tensions are running high. Talks often touched upon southern Wisconsin—a stretch of counties where as much as 40 to 50 percent of deer are infected with CWD and the epidemic has spiraled out of control.
"If we have other infected animals in the landscape around the farm, we want to remove them," Cornicelli said. "We know this deer's symptomatic, it's likely been shedding prions for a while. We want to do what we can to remove deer from around this area now. We do not want to end up like Wisconsin."
As speakers noted, efforts to contain CWD going back to its discovery in the mid-'60s are largely unsuccessful beyond eradicating enough deer to squelch little pockets of the outbreak before it can mature into a full-blown epidemic. Unlike viruses, bacteria or fungi, CWD manifests in malformed proteins, or prions, which cannot be treated by virtually any traditional anti-pathogenic method.
The plan as it is now, Cornicelli said, is to kill as many deer as possible—without completely eradicating the deer population—in the roughly 2-mile radius around where the infection was discovered between March 2 to March 24.
The Minnesota DNR is providing property owners of more than 10 acres of land with unlimited hunting permits during that time period. People who take part in the program are advised to register each carcass for testing, to not move any carcasses or venison away from the 2-mile radius until they can be verified as clean, and to notify authorities of any property owners not living in the area, as well as any individuals illegally transporting deer or deer products.
These prions are primarily transmitted through saliva, feces or urine—though they also lodge themselves in tissue, or have been documented to entrench themselves in soil for at least 16 years. In Crow Wing County, CWD-infected deer were first confirmed in 2016 on the 112-acre deer farm, Trophy Woods Ranch, less than a half-mile from the infected wild carcass.
Speakers noted the ranch—which reported 7 cases of confirmed CWD as recently as mid-2018—features a main enclave of pens with two layers of fences, while the game preserve portion only features one fence. Cornicelli said the ranch is the likely source of the disease. And therein lies the heart of an often heated, and sometimes downright acrimonious night.
"We've had chronic wasting disease in the state for quite a while, it's a mess down south and in Wisconsin, and it seems deer farms tend to be the culprit in terms of spreading the disease—including the one we have here," said Carl Medin, a resident of Crosslake whose son has property in the 2-mile radius. "The courts have the authority to stop the spread of chronic wasting disease. I'm wondering why they haven't done more to stop the spread, instead of waiting until we kinda have a disaster on our hands?"
Many comments of the evening followed in that vein—frustrated property owners who questioned why they had to now shoulder the role of responding to CWD. In turn, they pointed to deer farms that often harbor infected animals, and are not required by law to take a number of preventative measures or slaughter infected herds to stymie its transmission.
In answer to this, Cornicelli and his fellow speaker, Linda Glaser of the Minnesota Board of Animal Health, responded they could only act within the authority the state Legislature had given them. This too, was a common response the duo gave.
On the other hand, members of the Minnesota Deer Farmers Association and people more sympathetic to their position noted there are a variety of ways the disease can be transmitted from out of county or even out of state—whether that's taxidermists breaking importation laws, unsupervised drop areas for carcasses during hunting seasons, gut piles or other scenarios.
Read the rest in the Dispatch.
Northern Minnesota DFL state reps urge action on CWD
In the Pine Journal Tuesday, DFL state representative Mike Sundin, District 11A; Rob Ecklund, District 3A; John Persell, District 5A; Julie Sandstede, District 6A; and Dave Lislegard, District 6B write in State reps. column: Action needed to address chronic wasting disease:
The spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD) is a crisis for our state. Last week, the Department of Natural Resources discovered CWD in a wild deer in Crow Wing County, only a couple thousand feet from the fence of a deer farm with known CWD cases.
This was the first confirmed case in a wild deer outside of southeastern Minnesota. There is also a deer farm in Aitkin County with CWD positive deer. How long before wild deer are infected in Aitkin? Then Carlton? Then the rest of the Northland? We must act now to prevent this from spreading.
Generations of Minnesotans, including all of us, have grown up hunting every fall. It’s a constitutional right, and not on our watch will CWD jeopardize our traditions and connection to this land, or the billion-dollar Minnesotan hunting industry. We fill our freezers with venison, but can’t eat infected deer. And we can’t predict what it will infect next.
CWD is incredibly difficult to kill. Heating, freezing and chemicals don’t touch it. It’s always fatal. There’s no vaccine. No treatment. It spreads easily from deer to deer and even to plants. Animals can be infected and contagious for years before they show symptoms, and the only test available right now can’t be used on live animals.
Recently, University of Minnesota scientists testified at the Legislature that it hasn’t infected humans, but they believe it’s likely a matter of when, not if. There are some folks who believe that it’s all a bunch of bologna, but it’s just like mad cow disease.
For years, they wanted to believe it only infected cattle, even though scientists told them that it was only a matter of time. And look what happened. It spread to humans and caused tragic results for people and billions of dollars in damage to the industry. We’re not willing to gamble on our families’ or communities’ health.
We can’t bury our heads in the sand here. We must do more to combat CWD. We need accountability. We need research. We need to give the researchers and the DNR the tools they need to solve this problem. We need to eliminate contact between captive and wild deer and develop a better test that can be used on live animals.
CWD is a crisis, but we’ve figured out much harder things together, and we’re confident we can do it again.
The time to act is now. Stand with us to work on long-term solutions to protect our deer populations, our hunting revenue streams, our traditions, our families, and our way of life. Call your legislators and tell them that you support our bills to address CWD, and they should, too.
For a look at those bills, check out our earlier post, MNHouse: Becker-Finn releases comprehensive plan to immediately address CWD outbreak.
Dokken Column: Minnesota Deer Hunters Association resolves to fight CWD in state
In MDHA passes resolutions to fight CWD in the state Grand Forks Herald Sunday Northland Outdoors editor Brad Dokken reports:
Chronic wasting disease is front and center in the minds of deer hunters and conservation groups across the country, and that was apparent Saturday, Feb. 23, during the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association’s annual meeting in Grand Rapids,.
MDHA members from across the state voted in favor of several legislative initiatives to help protect Minnesota’s wild deer herd from the brain disease that’s fatal to deer, elk and moose, said Craig Engwall, MDHA executive director.
Until recently, CWD in Minnesota wild deer had been limited to the southeast part of the state, where more than 40 deer now have tested positive for the disease. That all changed last month, when an adult doe found dead Jan. 23 near Merrifield, Minn., in Crow Wing County tested positive for the disease.
CWD previously had been found in captive deer in Crow Wing County within a half mile of the recent finding, but the adult doe was a first for wild deer in the area.
“I think Crow Wing was an absolute wakeup call for everybody because a lot of our membership hunts up north or lives up north, and having it be so far away from that southeast corner of the state really brings it home,” Engwall, of Dora Lake, Minn., said in a phone interview.
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has proposed new funding of $4.57 million over the next two fiscal years and $1.1 million annually thereafter to combat chronic wasting disease, the DNR said. MDHA last weekend called on the governor and Legislature to agree to support and implement a number of key initiatives this year to fight CWD, including:
Requiring double fencing on all captive cervid farms.
Mandatory depopulation of all cervids on farms with a CWD-positive test.
Moratorium on any new cervid farms and a voluntary buyout of existing cervid farms.
Prohibition of interstate movement of both captive and wild cervids.
Prohibition of interstate movement of any captive cervid byproducts including blood and semen.
Elimination of antler point restrictions statewide.
Dedication of an additional 50 cents of current deer license fees to wild deer health, bringing the total from each deer license to $1.“With the discovery of a single CWD-positive wild deer within a half-mile of a CWD-infected captive cervid farm in Crow Wing County as well as the 40 plus wild deer testing CWD-positive in southeast Minnesota, it is imperative that Minnesota act now to protect its wild deer herd,” Engwall said. “CWD threatens not only Minnesota’s deer and deer hunting tradition, it threatens the nearly $1 billion economic impact that deer hunting contributes to Minnesota.” ...
Minnesota House Ag & Food Policy and Finance Division to hear bills on Thursday
In its March 2, 2019 weekly legislative update, the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources noted that the Ag & Food division will hear a number of the bills in the comprehensive plan to address CWD outbreak:
House Agriculture and Food Finance and Policy: H.F. 229 establishing additional fencing requirements for cervid farms, H.F. 305 creating a moratorium on white-tailed deer farms, H.F. 553 transferring regulatory authority of cervid farms from the Board of Animal Health to the DNR, and H.F. 1362 requiring depopulation of cervid farms when a CWD-infected animal is found on Thursday 3/7 at 9:45 in State Office Building room 200.
According to the Ag & Food division page, those who wish to sign up to testify should contact [email protected] and "Depending on numbers, testimony may be limited to 2 minutes each person." Readers who want to contact division members can find their names and contact information here. This stop likely to be most friendly toward the farmed deer industry, so messages of public support will help representatives know how much Minnesotans are concerned about this issue.
As always, be very respectful and polite.
Plan leader Jamie Becker-Finn tweets about CWD; we recommend following her on twitter for accurate information about the disease and efforts to fight it:
Captive deer owners keep sending me angry messages asking me to stop “attacking” their industry and to follow science.
— Jamie Becker-Finn (@jbeckerfinn) March 4, 2019
I’ve read *a lot* of scientific articles on #CWD and concluded that captive deer industry needs to change AND hunting practices need to change. #RealityCheck 🦌 pic.twitter.com/BqTQ1eWh81
Time to ditch the mineral lick! 🦌 Also please don’t feed wild deer, you increase the chances of disease transmission. #CWD pic.twitter.com/8GIW0IdHdU
— Jamie Becker-Finn (@jbeckerfinn) March 3, 2019
Statement from @MNDeerHunters in support of legislation to address chronic wasting disease #CWD #mnleg 🦌 pic.twitter.com/2ucDSHamNr
— Jamie Becker-Finn (@jbeckerfinn) February 27, 2019
Like other groups such as NDA, we are urging sportsman to be cautious when considering research claims... https://t.co/2uAmMmpm8q
— MN Deer Hunters Assn (@MNDeerHunters) February 19, 2019
Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is caused by prions, and the scientific evidence is overwhelming. While it’s important to explore all potential solutions, the spiroplasma theory is not new and has been thoroughly examined without verification. Learn more:https://t.co/dfQQeBNyVa pic.twitter.com/zVEMa826Fg
— QDMA (@TheQDMA) February 26, 2019
Photos: A wild whitetailed buck (top);Carl Medin asks a question Monday, March 4, at an open meeting presented by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Minnesota Board of Animal Health (middle) Still from Brainerd Dispatch video.
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