We've covered news of chronic wasting disease quite often here at Bluestem, sometimes wondering if we've overdone it.
Forum News outdoor reporter Brad Dokken's column, Stories of the Decade: Chronic wasting disease tops the list of biggest outdoors stories since 2010 in Minnesota and North Dakota, confirms our news judgment:
. . . the Story of the Decade since 2010 has to be the continued spread of chronic wasting disease in deer herds in North Dakota and Minnesota.
The Game and Fish Department and Minnesota DNR both are devoting ever-increasing resources to battling the disease that’s fatal to deer, elk and moose and persists indefinitely on the landscape.
At last count, North Dakota had 17 confirmed cases of CWD, all in the south-central and northwest. The Game and Fish Department this fall tested about 3,000 hunter-shot deer in addition to the 30,000 it’s tested since sampling began in 2002.
The tally is even higher in Minnesota, where 73 wild deer in the southeast and north-central parts of the state have tested positive for CWD. The DNR has tested more than 90,000 deer since 2002, a process that accelerated in 2010, when the first positive case in wild deer was detected in Olmsted County.
CWD sucks up more resources in the DNR’s Section of Wildlife than any other issue, according to John Williams, Northwest Region wildlife supervisor for the Minnesota DNR in Bemidji.
“The history of fighting this disease is very bad for us and all the agencies throughout the nation,” Williams said. “We never wanted to see it on our turf, but it’s here.”
In an effort to limit the spread of CWD, Minnesota and North Dakota both have implemented restrictions on moving whole carcasses of deer, elk or moose across state lines and outside of infected areas, allowing only quarters of meat with no head or spinal column attached.
In addition, North Dakota has imposed baiting bans in areas where CWD has been found, and Minnesota has implemented feeding restrictions in addition to statewide baiting bans already in place.
“We’re putting everything we can towards it, and there’s a lot of fatigue in the department in the Section of Wildlife staff right now because of it, but we’re giving it our best,” Williams said. “I think the bottom line of this thing is when it’s all said and done, wherever that’s lined up, nobody is going to be able to say the DNR did not do everything in its possible power to prevent this disease as well as keep it from spreading.”
Related recent posts (since December 26):
MN DNR emergency rule prohibits all movement of farmed white-tailed deer for next 30 days
Minnesota Chronic Wasting Disease test results update-- and a case of regulatory capture
Photo: A healthy wild whitetail buck.
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