For decades hunters and conservationists across the country have faced the challenge of ever-increasing rates of chronic wasting disease in deer and other cervid populations.
The Missouri Department of Conservation has been working to address the disease since our first confirmed case in Missouri's white-tail deer population in 2012. MDC Director Jason Sumners said their main goals are to limit spread and impact.
"Once established in an area," he explained, "eradication is not a likely outcome. And so you're trying to do really early management, focused around where the disease is known to exist, to try to limit the rate in which it spreads. Because we do know that if left unmanaged, it does increase in prevalence and distribution much more rapidly than when we do intensively manage the disease."
In Missouri, Sumners said that management has involved testing and surveillance, issuing additional permits to hunters and landowners, lessening some restrictions and implementing rules about bait and mineral placement to discourage deer from congregating and spreading CWD.
It has also involved what is known as targeted removal. A post-hunting-season period when MDC works with hunters and landowners to cull local deer populations within a square mile or two of a positive case. That policy has proven controversial and time consuming for the department.
Sumners said that targeted removal has taken about 27,000 deer from the population since 2012. In that time, hunters harvested about 3.5 million deer in the state. But some detractors still describe the culling as a slaughter. Others question the seriousness of CWD.
Sumners said at least one study of deer populations in decline in Arkansas links the decline to chronic wasting disease. Comparisons between diligent CWD management in Illinois and laxer policies in Wisconsin also indicate that targeted removal helps slow the spread of the disease.
But targeted removal requires building relationships and trust with landowners, which is taxing on staff, and made difficult to impossible when the public is unwilling or hesitant to collaborate. Sumners said he understands.
"Folks in a lot of ways have invested lifetime savings or have made tons of sacrifice to buy a piece of land that they can hunt on and ensure that they have those opportunities in the future." He explained, "I totally understand why they would be concerned and would have questions."
The MDC announced a pause on targeted removal this season. Sumners said his department needs to work with the public to create a sustainable plan going forward.
He stressed the importance of a healthy deer population.
"It's socially very important to us," Sumners said. "And economically it's very important to us. These management efforts are costly. In terms of staff time and resources, engagement with landowners and members of the public to do that work. So, it really is a cost benefit, kind of thing. And you have to take a step back once in a while and say, are we doing the right thing? Do we have the most efficient approach? How might we address this into the future?"
Sumners said one point of contention is that the removal happens after hunting season. He said ideally all deer population management would happen during the season, and the pause will give his department time to understand this and other barriers.
He said it's important that the state does something. MDC estimates that deer hunting generates $1.6 billion in economic activity in the state each year, and Sumners said it's impossible to anticipate the long-term effects of "letting nature take its course."
"We do know certainly in the short term, and short term being, you know, the next decade or two if we do nothing, that prevalence rates will increase pretty rapidly. And it, without question, does jeopardize the health and sustainability of of our whitetail deer population."
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