Contact: Jake Fries, DNR Waushara County Wildlife Biologist
Jacob.Fries@wisconsin.gov or 920-420-0384
DNR Confirms CWD In Wild Deer In Waushara County
Baiting And Feeding Bans Renewed, Public Meeting To Be Scheduled
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 Waushara County. The deer was found dead in early February in the town of Wautoma and is within 10 miles of the Marquette and Portage county borders.
This detection will cause the following:
- Waushara County will renew the ban already in place.
- Marquette and Portage counties currently have three-year baiting and feeding bans in place from positive detections within the county, so this detection will not impact those counties.
The deer was a 3-year-old buck and is the first confirmed wild CWD-positive deer detected in Waushara County.
The DNR and the Waushara County Deer Advisory Council plan to host a public meeting. More details will be provided in the future via a news release and on the DNR’s Hearings and Meetings Calendar. At the meeting, DNR staff will provide information about CWD in Wisconsin and local testing efforts within Waushara County.
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 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 (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.
More general information about CWD can be found on the DNR’s CWD webpage.
