If this is a look at our future, it’s a scary one.
Wisconsin made national headlines back in 2001 when it discovered chronic wasting disease within its borders. It was the first place east of the Mississippi where the always-deadly deer disease turned up.
Not to worry, said some. CWD had been present in some western states for decades and the deer and elk herds were still fine, they said.
Oh no, others said. The density of whitetails in places like Wisconsin – where deer populations are larger and more tightly packed together than in western states – meant the disease would spread further and faster, to the detriment of deer and deer hunters.
And what happened?
Lots of bad stuff, to put it mildly.
After going with what some called the “nuclear option” for a while, and trying to dramatically lower deer numbers in an attempt to get rid of the disease, the state’s Department of Natural Resources is now simply monitoring the disease. The result, according to one agency report, is that lots of deer in an ever-growing area are showing up with CWD.
That’s got some warning that a population crash is possible if not likely in the near future.
You can read an excellent article on the whole situation here.
Is that Pennsylvania’s future? Despite cries to the contrary that deer populations are a fraction of what they once were – true enough in places – we’ve still got a lot of deer compared to many other places.
Some are already sick. We’ve got CWD, albeit — thankfully — in small numbers so far. But there’s no reason to think those deer won’t spread the disease.
And with CWD in West Virginia and Maryland, right over the border, we’ll likely see it spread here from there.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission is trying to contain all that, having established three disease management areas with special rules for hunters. But at least one of them – DMA 2, which is where the disease has been found in wild deer – continues to grow. It’s spread across all of wildlife management unit 4A in southcentral Pennsylvania, and even expanded into Somerset County and southwestern Pennsylvania.
Will we someday have to deal with what Wisconsin is going through?
That’s not pleasant to think about.
