CWD found in harvested Chippewa County buck
It’s been confirmed that the first positive test result for chronic wasting disease (CWD), has been found in a wild deer in Chippewa County. The deer was a hunterharvested one-year-old buck and is the first confirmed wild CWDpositive deer detected in Chippewa County.
The deer was harvested within 10 miles of the Barron and Dunn county borders.
This detection will cause the following: • Chippewa County will renew a three-year baiting and feeding ban already in place.
• Barron County will renew a two-year baiting and feeding ban already in place.
• Dunn County currently has a three-year baiting and feeding ban in place for positive detections within the county, so this detection will not impact Dunn County.
The DNR and the Chippewa County Deer Advisory Council are hosting a public meeting, Thursday, Feb. 6, at 6:30 p.m, at the Chippewa County Courthouse, Room 003. At the meeting, DNR staff will provide information about CWD in Wisconsin, and local testing efforts within Chippewa 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
See CWD FOUND / Page 4 CWD found in Chippewa
– Continued from Front (TSEs) 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 that 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.
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.
More information regarding baiting and feeding regulations is available at dnr.wisconsin. gov.
