Can the state shoot its way out of the crisis?

The myth of containment
Wisconsin's strategy for combating deer disease may be doomed to failure

By Brian McCombie
June 14, 2002
 

Nick Sondel thought all the deer had left town -- or, rather, the township. Specifically the township of Vermont, west of Madison, which became ground zero for chronic wasting disease (CWD) when three deer killed there by hunters in November 2001 later tested positive for the fatal brain disease. Sondel owns a tree farm and lives on 100 acres just north of Mount Horeb. His property is part of the Eradication Zone, where the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources wants to greatly reduce, if not completely kill off, the local deer population to stop the spread of CWD.
 After months of shooting, the deer disappeared. Oh, Sondel saw some deer -- a few dead ones that had staggered onto his property before dying from their bloody wounds. But he noticed almost no live ones around his home, previously a haven for deer. Then, when the DNR's expanded hunt ended at the end of March, a strange thing happened.
 “Within two weeks after all the shooting stopped, I started seeing deer all over the place,” says Sondel. He had wondered, given all the hunting and the DNR's ongoing claims of success, if a large number of deer had succumbed to hunters’ bullets. But he now believes “the deer are not that stupid” as to let themselves be eradicated. In the face of intensive hunting, they simply went into hiding, day and night.
 Uncooperative deer are just one reason to doubt the DNR can hunt its way out of the CWD predicament. The Eradication Zone hunt, now more than a year old, seems to have barely made a dent in the herd, in part because many landowners aren’t behind the DNR’s plans.
 Meanwhile, the DNR still doesn’t know how CWD got to Wisconsin, so it’s possible the same scenario that brought the disease here in the first place is bringing in more. Regulations governing state game farms have increased since February 2002, yet there remain large gaps. 
 And amid indications that CWD has not yet spread throughout the state, there are signs that the disease is continuing to spread. Even an ardent DNR supporter has to wonder if the disease is too much for the agency to handle, especially now that it wants to double the size of the Eradication Zone.
 In short, if you're going to bet your 401K on which will win -- the DNR, which hopes to contain the disease, or CWD, which could defy the DNR's best efforts to contain it -- bet on CWD.

'A window of time'
The DNR effort to kill off a major percentage of deer within the eradication zone does have supporters, including Dr. Elizabeth Williams of the University of Wyoming’s department of veterinary sciences. Williams headed a panel of wildlife experts that came to Wisconsin in April to examine the DNR’s approach.
 “At this point in time, the panel felt that the DNR was on the right track,” says Williams, who discovered CWD more than two decades ago and is now one of the nation's leading experts on the disease. She adds that the 41,000 deer the DNR tested for CWD last year represented “an amazing effort” -- the largest single wildlife disease testing ever in America.
 In Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming, where CWD is also found in wild deer and elk, “We have it across a huge area, around 40,000 square miles,” says Williams. “There’s really not much of a way that we can eradicate it.”
 But in Wisconsin, the 411-square-mile Eradication Zone -- and even the proposed new 874-square mile zone -- are much smaller than infected Western areas. “The DNR," says Williams, "has the chance to really reduce the herd in this fairly contained area.”
 The idea that CWD exists within a “fairly contained area” is an important operating principle for the DNR. Tom Hauge, chief of the DNR’s wildlife division, notes that the plan originally drew flak from landowners in the then-proposed Eradication Zone.
 “A year ago, we were hearing criticism from [people in] that area that CWD was all over the state of Wisconsin,” says Hauge. “So it was pointless to do what we were trying to do. But when we did look, we did not find it everywhere.”
 Indeed, all of the just over 200 confirmed cases of CWD in Wisconsin so far have been in the Eradication Zone or neighboring areas.
 “There’s likely a window of time, and it’s not forever," continues Hauge, "when the state might have a chance to eradicate this disease from its deer herd. We believe we are still in that window.”
 In April, Dr. Judd Aiken at the UW-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine reported that 86% to 96% of the Wisconsin deer he tested had no genetic resistance to the disease. With this lack of resistance, says Aiken, “If the goal is to control this disease, eradication or a tremendous reduction in the herd are the only options we have right now.”
 But even if eradication makes sense, that doesn't mean it's doable.
 Consider: The DNR initially estimated there were between 25,000 and 30,000 deer in the Eradication Zone, before the hunt began. This estimate was recently revised downward to 17,900, based on helicopter surveys. The hunting began in spring 2002, went on intermittently through the summer, and became near-constant in October and November. It continued on through the winter right to the end of March 2003. During the past few months the hunt has even taken place at night, with DNR hunters shooting deer over bait piles.
 All that shooting killed off approximately 8,850 deer. The DNR doesn’t have any data on previous kills in this area, since this was the first year the Eradication Zone as such existed. But Deer Management Unit 70A encompasses much of the zone. And within this area, 4,053 deer were killed in 2001 and 4,900 in 2002; the average over the last 10 years is 5,300.
 Why has the kill not been much higher than normal even though months were added to the hunting season? Part of it, as Sondel experienced, is the adeptness of deer at playing hide-and-seek, a phenomenon well-known in hunting circles. Outdoor and hunting magazines often note how hard it is to kill a deer at the end of even a week-long hunting season, as the deer hide out after just a day or two of shooting.
 Some of those deer undoubtedly were hiding on the 30% of the Eradication Zone where landowners signed petitions against the DNR’s eradication efforts circulated by a group called Citizens Against Irrational Deer Slaughter (CAIDS).
 “The DNR said all along that this [eradication plan] would not work without landowner support,” says Sondel, a CAIDS member. “But they don’t have it.” He predicts that if the zone is expanded, there will be similar resistance from other landowners.
 Other deer simply move on. "White-tailed deer are very residential and usually stay within their home ranges," says Dr. Charles Southwick, a professor emeritus of biology at the University of Colorado. "But if you stir them up too much, there can be substantial movement."
 Southwick, who specializes in animal population studies, says some deer may migrate many miles from their home. This dispersal, he notes, could actually accelerate the spread of CWD.
 "It's an unfortunate and unrealistic goal," says Southwick of eradication. "It can't be done."

How hard it can be
To understand the difficulty of stopping CWD, consider the experience of the state of Colorado.
 Williams discovered CWD at the Foothills Wildlife Research Facility, near Fort Collins, Colo., about 50 miles north of Denver, in 1980, though the disease had been killing deer here since the mid-1960s. The facility is run by Colorado’s Division of Wildlife, which brought in wild deer and elk for various studies, then released them back into the wild. This makes Foothills the probable center of the infection.
 Today, CWD is found as far east as the Nebraska border, south to well below Denver, and hundreds of miles west over the Continental Divide, all the way to Utah (which just reported its second case of CWD in a wild deer). Infection rates in most areas are at only 3% to 4%, but pockets of 10% and even 15% exist.
 While the disease apparently had help from game farms seeding it into different areas, the larger point is depressingly clear. In a state where deer and elk densities are low (generally well under 20 animals per square mile), CWD has spread out over an area approximately half the size of Wisconsin in just three decades. And southern Wisconsin has considerably more deer than anywhere in Colorado, starting at 40 white-tails per square mile and exceeding 50 deer in many areas.
 The best current science finds that CWD passes between animals that have close contact with each other. (Even so, in Wisconsin there is political pressure to reverse a proposed ban on deer feeding, because people like seeing deer and some hunters rely on this method to bag Bambi.) Susceptibility to CWD, by species, is apparently worst among white-tailed deer, followed by mule deer and then elk. In Colorado, most of the infected animals are mule deer and elk; the state has only a relative handful of white-tailed deer.
 No one knows for sure how long CWD’s been in Wisconsin, but Julie Langenberg, the DNR’s veterinarian in charge of disease testing, says it’s probably been here at least three years. Already, 1.6% of the deer tested killed in the Eradication Zone in 2002 were positive for CWD.
 Aiken, of the UW-Madison’s veterinary school, says his discovery that most white-tailed deer lack genetic resistance to the disease suggests that the rate of infection here "can and will go much higher” with time, maybe in as little as three or four years.
 Early last year, the DNR set out to determine how CWD got to the Mount Horeb area. That investigation, while still open, is essentially stalled unless new information comes to light. One implication of this, admits the DNR's Hauge, is that “the process which brought the disease to the Mount Horeb area could be unfolding in different parts of Wisconsin, but at a level that isn’t currently detectable.”
 Meanwhile, Illinois has discovered 14 cases of CWD in wild deer along Wisconsin’s southern border. Hauge says Illinois wildlife officials have no idea how CWD got to their state, either.
 So far, DNR testing hasn’t found CWD in Wisconsin along the Illinois border. But last year’s CWD sampling was far from complete. In many counties bordering Illinois, the DNR didn’t collect the 500 deer per county it wanted. In Rock County, there were 308 samples; in Walworth County, 128; Kenosha County, 27; and in Racine County, 20 samples. Even if those counties are currently clean, the Illinois positives mean Wisconsin has the makings of another Eradication Zone along its southern border.

PR vs. substance
Last fall’s message was very clear: "Fight CWD, Hunt Deer," the billboards, yard signs and bumper stickers read. These were put out by the DNR and Whitetails Unlimited, a national hunting organization based in Sturgeon Bay. At one point in 2002, it looked as though the number of Wisconsin hunters might be significantly lower due to CWD concerns. Yet when the season started, only 10% of hunters opted out, and John Stauber thinks the “Fight CWD” message did in fact bolster hunter numbers.
 Stauber, a Madison activist and co-author of Mad Cow U.S.A., warned three years ago that CWD was probably in the state already. Stauber also writes about the world of public relations, and how government agencies and large industries use PR to mislead the public. With CWD, Stauber finds the DNR very much in the disinformation game.
 “The idea that you’re fixing the CWD problem by hunting deer certainly resonates with state deer hunters,” observes Stauber. “It’s a unifying message” that something can be done if hunters and landowners just pull together.
 “The problem with that PR message is it has no substance,” continues Stauber. “That message also reveals what the true bottom line is for the DNR: selling hunting licenses and keeping people hunting deer.”
 What the DNR should do, argues Stauber, is acknowledge that it they can’t stop this disease from spreading and that “CWD may spread into people, livestock, and other animals.” But this would drive away deer hunters and require even more massive testing of deer, both of which would cost the DNR millions of dollars.
 Game farm regulations have been changed considerably since CWD was discovered in Wisconsin, including mandatory CWD testing for all animals more than 16 months old that are killed or die, and a rule allowing importation of animals only from game farms that can prove they’ve been CWD-free for five years. But all of this, says Stauber, is closing the barn door -- or, in this case, the game farm gate -- after the animals have left.
 This January, the DNR's regulatory control over state deer farms was transferred to the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (DATCP). Before this, the DNR preformed an audit on all deer farms, finding that 671 deer had escaped from 182 game farms between 2000 and 2002, with 436 of these deer never recovered. The first CWD-infected deer at a Wisconsin game farm was found in Portage County in September 2002; two more game farms with CWD-infected animals were later discovered.
 Meanwhile, the state's 200-plus game farms have long been regulated by DATCP. But, says agency spokeswoman Donna Gilson, “We do not have an estimate of the number of escaped elk, because it was not required for [game farmers] to report this to us, until now.” The rule requiring game farms to report escapes within 48 hours took effect June 1.
 DATCP’s lack of knowledge on this point is troubling, given that it was the importation of several hundred elk potentially exposed to CWD which caused the DNR to begin testing for the disease in 1999. Gilson admits that escapes have occurred, most recently in May, when 20 elk wandered through the front gate of a game farm near New Holstein.
 According to Gilson, DATCP doesn’t require CWD testing for game farm animals under 16 months because it’s believed that CWD doesn’t even show up in an animal before this time. But last year, the DNR found six fawns from the Eradication Zone infected with CWD, and two of of them were no more than six months old. Additionally, Dr. Williams says game agencies in Colorado and Wyoming have found wild CWD-infected deer fawns, and four additional infected fawns were discovered on a Nebraska game farm in January 2003.
 “The fact that game farmers don’t have to test animals under 16 months means [DATCP’s] going to miss infected animals born on these farms,” says Stauber. “These regulations to try to control CWD from getting onto game farms are doomed.”

Leading edge
The next time you hear or read that CWD’s been contained in Wisconsin, understand that this “containment” is occurring on maps, not in the wild.
 When the discovery of the first CWD-positive deer was announced in February 2002, the DNR began killing deer in western Dane and eastern Iowa counties to sample for the disease. When more positives were discovered, the DNR added area to the Eradication Zone, which started out at 287 square miles in May but was upped to 361 square miles before the month was over. By August, it was nudged up to 374 square miles, and topped out in October 2002 at 411 square miles.
 Then, in April 2003, the DNR asked the Natural Resources Board to further expand the Eradication Zone to 874 square miles, mostly because a handful of positive deer were found west of the Eradication Zone line. The board approved the request, which also needs legislative assent.
 What's happening is that new boundaries are being created as more CWD positives are found near the edges of or just outside the Eradication Zone. One of the CWD-positive deer from 2002 was killed approximately 20 miles west of the Eradication Zone (and about five miles south of Richland Center), another south of this and more than 10 miles west of the Eradication Zone border. These discoveries forced the DNR to extend the zone west and southwest substantially. Hauge admits these new positives are “probably the leading edge of the infection.”
 Last year, the DNR acknowledged doubts about its ability to eradicate all the deer within a 411-square-mile area. Asked why the DNR now thinks it can somehow pull off a mass kill of deer in an area twice as large, Hauge replies, “From a statewide perspective, we are still trying to hold to the course of eradication.”
 Pete Gerl, executive director of Whitetails Unlimited, is singing from the same hymnal: “We’re going with the recommendations of the wildlife professionals hired by the state of Wisconsin to manage our wildlife." Asked whether Whitetails Unlimited actually believes the DNR can conquer CWD through hunting, Gerl repeats his original answer.
 Stauber thinks CWD’s too big a problem for any single state to tackle, and many state wildlife officials agree. Yet the federal government has been slow to take a leadership role, and federal funds to combat the disease have been piddling. The DNR’s applied for about $200,000 in CWD funding through the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which also agreed to cover the state's lab test costs, which Hague estimates are in the $300,000 to $400,000 range. Meanwhile, the DNR spent $12 million on CWD last year alone.

Live with it?
Admittedly, the DNR is in a tough position. It had little choice but to do something about a disease that threatens deer hunting and even deer watching in Wisconsin. And, being used to managing deer through hunting, it's not surprising the DNR took the hunting route with CWD.
 But maybe we need to accept that CWD isn’t going to be eradicated or contained, and that living with it is the only real option. A “live with it” approach would allow the DNR to focus its financial resources and manpower (both threatened by Wisconsin’s current budget deficit) toward finding better CWD tests and providing them to hunters.
 Another potential advantage to getting out of the attempted eradication business, says Southwick, is that it would allow those few deer with potential genetic resistance to spread their genes. That, he feels, might eventually develop a more resistant population.
 Conceding defeat is a sobering option, one many people will immediately reject. Yet if defeat is tough to swallow, Hauge’s “leading edge of infection” shows the CWD genie is well out of the bottle.
 If trends continue, the 2004 Eradication Zone will likely be on the order of 1,500 square miles, or more than three times its size in fall 2002. (For comparison, all of Dane County encompasses just 1,200 square miles.) This new Eradication Zone might look impressive on a map, color-coded and nicely delineated, but it will be a containment the deer and CWD won’t recognize, and one that Wisconsin hunters can’t make a reality.