Marinette County has first wild deer positive for CWD
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MADISON, Wis. - Marinette County's first wild deer to test positive for chronic wasting disease has been confirmed near Peshtigo, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources announced Thursday.
The 3-year-old adult buck was humanely dispatched due to signs of illness, the Wisconsin DNR stated in a news release.
The DNR said this detection means --
-- The feeding and baiting ban in Marinette County will be extended for three more years. The expiration date will be extended further with any additional detections anywhere in the county.
-- The existing baiting and feeding bans in adjacent counties are not affected by the positive test in Marinette County.
CWD is a fatal, infectious nervous system disease of deer, moose, elk and reindeer/caribou. It belongs to the family of diseases known as transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, or prion diseases. The DNR began monitoring the state's wild white-tailed deer population for CWD in 1999. The first positives were found in 2002.
State law requires the DNR enact a three-year baiting and feeding ban in counties where CWD has been detected, as well as a two-year ban in adjoining counties within 10 miles of a CWD detection. If additional CWD cases are found during the lifetime of a baiting and feeding ban, the ban will renew for an additional two or three years with each new positive test result as they are confirmed.
Baiting or feeding deer encourages them to congregate unnaturally around a shared food source where infected deer can spread CWD through direct contact with healthy deer or indirectly by leaving behind infectious prions in their saliva, blood, feces and urine, the DNR states in the release.
Baiting or feeding bans are now in place in 60 of Wisconsin's 72 counties.
More information regarding baiting and feeding regulations is available on the DNR's Baiting and Feeding webpage, https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/hunt/bait.
More general information about CWD can be found on the DNR's CWD webpage, https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/wildlifehabitat/cwd.
CWD sampling locations can be found on the DNR's CWD Sampling webpage, https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/WildlifeHabitat/registersample.