Chronic wasting disease confirmed in a wild deer in Marinette County

MARINETTE, Wis. (WLUC) - The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources confirmed the first positive test result for chronic wasting disease in a wild deer in Marinette County near Peshtigo, Thursday. This will extend the three-year ban on baiting and feeding in Marinette County.

This detection will cause the following:

• The current feeding and baiting ban in Marinette will be extended for three additional 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 impacted.

DNR Field Operations Manager for the Western Upper Peninsula, Bill Scullon, said that so far, no bans will be placed in the Michigan counties that neighbor Marinette. But they will await reports from Wisconsin DNR Officials.

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 on the DNR’s Baiting and Feeding webpage.

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 infected deer was a 3-year-old adult buck and was humanely dispatched due to signs of illness.

Wisconsin 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 with each new positive test result as they are confirmed.

More general information about CWD can be found on the Wisconsin DNR’s CWD webpage.

CWD sampling locations can be found on the Wisconsin DNR’s CWD Sampling webpage.

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