Owners of a deer farm in Washington County where a deer recently tested positive for chronic wasting disease say they will comply with a request to depopulate a related herd hundreds of miles away in Bayfield County.
A buck at Tamarak Elk and Deer Farm in Kewaskum tested positive for CWD in February, leading the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection to quarantine herds at the Kewaskum farm, but also Copper Hills Hunting Preserve in Bayfield County, where about two dozen deer had been moved from Washington County.
"(DATCP) recommended doing a depopulation up at this Bayfield County farm, which we are complying with," said co-owner Jane Stolz.
Stolz and her husband also own the 400-acre Copper Hills in Bayfield County, and are planning to open the hunting preserve in the future.
Now, the deer in the Bayfield County town of Oulu will be euthanized and tested for CWD. There's no timetable to complete the testing.
Bayfield County officials are concerned about the impact farm-raised deer and this hunting preserve may have on the wild deer population.
"The hunting culture in Bayfield County is one of the major economic drivers," said county zoning and planning director Rob Schierman. "Any instability in that hunting culture and property values, there's so much that's taken into consideration if there was a positive test."
Farm-raised deer are considered domestic animals in Wisconsin and allowed to be raised on land that's zoned for agriculture.
At the Copper Hills preserve, about 120 acres of land is zoned for farming and the rest is considered forestland. There was no fencing in between the areas and the transplanted deer were allowed to roam the entire property.
Schierman said the owners needed a permit from Bayfield County to allow the deer to use the entire property, which they never received.
"The county wants to be sure that CWD doesn't get into Bayfield County," he said. "In the future, if requests come forward, if they ever allow a use like that, it would be with double-fencing to keep the farm-raised deer herd isolated from the wild herd."
Stolz is confident deer in Bayfield will be CWD-free. She said that in the almost 20 years they've raised deer at their Washington County farm, this is the first positive CWD test.
Since 2003, the state has tested more than 46,000 farm-raised deer that have died and only about 250 samples have tested positive for the disease.
"I can't say it's on the rise," said state veterinarian Paul McGraw. "We do know that we do find new detections on farms and that's because our surveillance is working. All the deer are tested on a deer farm that die or they kill on the farm."
McGraw said Wisconsin has CWD issues with deer raised on farms and in the wild, but officials don't have a good handle yet on all of the ways the disease is transmitted.
