DNR Confirms CWD In Wild Deer In La Crosse County

MADISON, Wis. – The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) confirms the first positive test result for chronic wasting disease (CWD) in a wild deer in La Crosse County. The deer was a hunter-harvested adult buck and was harvested within 10 miles of both the Monroe and Vernon County borders.

This detection will cause the following: 

• La Crosse County was under a 2-year baiting and feeding ban prior to this detection. That ban will be extended for another three years and will reset following any future detections, as required by state law.
• Monroe and Vernon counties currently have 3-year baiting and feeding bans in place for positive detections within each respective county. This detection will not impact those counties.

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 (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 3-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 on the DNR’s Baiting and Feeding webpage.

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