Wisconsin mobilizes to battle chronic wasting disease

摘要

Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources wants hunters to depopulate an estimated 15,000 white-tailed deer in a 287-square-mile zone to halt the spread of chronic wasting disease, a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy of North American deer and elk. Department officials are also proposing reductions of up to half the deer populations in 14 counties. Chronic wasting disease was found for the first time in Wisconsin this February in three randomly sampled bucks. Subsequent testing of 516 deer revealed 11 more infections. Now, the state's deer and elk populations, along with its 1 billion dollar hunting industrg, are threatened by a disease researchers are just beginning to understand. "I cannot emphasize enough that hunters and landowners hold the keys to dealing with chronic wasting sickness," said Darrell Bazzell, secretary of the state Department of Natural Resources, in a statement. "If we want to have healthy deer and deer hunting in the future, we're going to have to do some hard things now--open our lands and start the very sad task of drastically reducing deer numbers in the CWD zone."