Minnesota deer kill planned in response to CWD finding

The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources has established a chronic wasting disease containment zone and plans to kill about 900 deer in the area yet this winter, according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

A deer killed by an archer Nov. 28 about three miles from the town of Pine Island in southeastern Minnesota was discovered to be infected with chronic wasting disease (CWD).

The doe was the first wild deer in the state known to be afflicted with CWD. The DNR has responded with aerial surveys of deer in the area, following which - beginning this weekend - a representative sample of that whitetail population will be killed.

The DNR hopes about 900 deer in all will be felled before the deer disperse in early March. The plan is for 500 animals to come from a core area within a 5-mile radius of the spot where the infected deer was shot, with the remaining 400 deer killed in a larger, 10-mile-radius area.

“It's a significant number of deer, but with respect to the total number of deer on the landscape, it's not a lot,” said DNR big game coordinator Lou Cornicelli.

The DNR estimates about 6,500 deer inhabit the 10-mile-radius area.

“Our hope is that we can get the majority of the needed sample with landowner shooting,” Cornicelli said. “Our goal is to determine the level of infection in the local deer population and to remove additional potentially infected animals.”

Killing some of the area's deer is the only way to determine whether the disease has spread to other deer, as it has in southern Wisconsin, and if so, how widespread it might be, Cornicelli said.

The DNR is seeking widespread cooperation so it can accurately assess the threat CWD poses to Minnesota's wild deer population, which is estimated at more than 1 million animals.

If landowners agree to allow deer killing on their property but don't want to do it themselves, U.S. Department of Agriculture sharpshooters might be employed.

CWD is always fatal to deer, elk and moose, and while no Minnesota moose have been affected, the disease has been found in captive elk here, beginning in 2002.

CWD is not believed to affect humans, though variations of the disease do.

In the past eight years, the DNR has tested more than 32,000 hunter-killed or road-killed deer, 60 elk and 90 moose for CWD. The archer-killed deer felled in November has been the only wild animal found with CWD.

In the Pine Island CWD case, captive elk are prime suspects. Two years ago, four elk in a captive herd near that town were found to be infected, and the herd was killed in its entirety.