Doesn't look likely[:'(]. Sorry but doom to your deer will come! lol.

you will not eradicate this it is here to stay and to wide spread the areas that test the more it is found. it took over a thousand tests in one small area to find it here and even afterover a thousand tests in a different county it was not found but the next year it was found there. look at a map from thirty miles north of madison WI and at least 50 miles west of there then down to Dekalb Co. IL and that is the known effected area and growing every year.

It is interesting that you are telling everyone to look at the CWD maps now when you yourself did not know where the Columbia County sample was found a few posts ago. It also appears that you did not know CWD was found a few miles south of Rock County in Illinois before the Rock County samples were found.

This is where CWD has been found in North America to date:



It is pretty obvious that CWD is absent from more places than it is present. 49 of the 50 states are testing for CWD this year and if it really is everywhere like you have been saying, we will soon know.

excuse me but you had the wrong info a few posts ago it is not by Lodi but by Prairie du Sac I can see the farm from my stand up the valley about one mile away. I dont need the maps I know were the deer in Illinois tested positive I was telling those people to look at a map and draw lines and that is how wide spread it is. the testing you speak of has to be large numbers in small areas to be effective. As my post said about Columbia county last year over 1000 deer tested with no poitives then this year one comes up positive. Now it has been found quite a bit further south of the previous findings in IL Southern Dekalb county As reported in email from north american hunting club. Those little red dots on your map in wi and il should solid between them. My other point which you are to thick headed to understand is you can not kill all the deer off in that wide of an area. even reducing the herd will not stop it may slow it but not stop it. I have been following this since it started in this area so I probably know more than you ever could because again all you will do is look at wi dnr web site.

You pointed out that the positive sample was near Prairie du Sac only after I showed you where the sample was on the CWD map. (For those of you that are not familiar with Wisconsin, the map below shows where Prairie du Sac and Lodi are located. The yellow sections have each registed one positive CWD sample and the one farthest to the right is the new Columbia County sample.)

Since you have a farm in Prairie du Sac, I am sure you knew that Lodi was right on the other side of the sample from you, right?


To refresh your memory, this is what you said this previously:

So you live in Prairie du Sac huh? A sample was found right next to you at Sauk City, yet you were shocked about the new positive sample only sections away from there. That does not make any sense. Did you somehow not know they found a sample near Sauk City?

You are basically arguing that the CWD distribution was not mapped correctly, because that section between Prairie du Sac and Lodi did not register a positive last year. That does not make any sense either.

Sling every time you answer you prove that you are more of an idiot than I thought. Yes I knew of the sauk city one and no it was not a suprise remember I am the one who thinks it is more side spread also I never said that that cwd was mapped wrong. What I am saying is it is more wide spread than the dnr thinks one year ago it was confined to mount horeb since then it has been found in numerous other places As for the positive sample near PDS I knew all along where it was. I am saying they tested over 1000 deer in columbia county and got no positives last year so they said99% positive that columbia county was free. Again you have twisted your facts or are not smart enough to understand as I said I now what is going on with cwd I dont need some fool who knows nothing wasting my time. PS Lodi is over ten miles away. DId you know that problably not if it is not a dnr map you probably cant understand it.

Sling

I've found your posts very informative and admire the way you refrain from the name calling! I also agree with you on the CAIDS website!

rcw280

You've lost pretty much all credibility the moment you started the name calling!
A good debate is healthy when done in a gentleman like manner!

Bowfanatic slings posts are all dnr which only promotes their point of view, and ignores all others.Being from northeast wi this does not affect you. As for caids is you feel the same as sling you have personaly insulted thousands of hunters and landowners and you have lost credibility with them and me but I suppose thats different since it is your beliefs you can insult who you want. I am not a member but know many who have land and are they have over 100000 acres protecting the deer herd. Please stay in your own area because most landowners would around here would prefer it. By the way there was another cwd positive 25 miles east and 25 miles north of farthest east positive about 15 miles from lake Michigan at paddock lake the mor testing that is done the further it is found.

New zones are likely in deer disease fight Expanded hunting seen in Walworth, Kenosha counties

By LEE BERGQUIST [email protected]

Posted: Jan. 9, 2004

Special hunting zones to fight chronic wasting disease and reduce the deer population are likely to be created later this year in parts of Kenosha and Walworth counties, a state Department of Natural Resources official said Friday.

Chronic Wasting Disease The first-ever finding of the disease in Kenosha County this week will complicate the state's efforts to control the disease, said Tom Hauge, director of the DNR's Bureau of Wildlife Management.

And Hauge said it could take a decade or more to wipe out the fatal disease that was first discovered almost two years ago in Dane County, and now extends some 130 miles, from Paddock Lake to Richland County.

Wisconsin is still in the early stages of its battle with the disease, he said. Michigan's outbreak of tuberculosis in the wild deer herd began in 1994, and officials there are still fighting TB, Hauge said.

"This is not going to be a quick fix," he said.

Creating zones will give the DNR more tools to reduce the deer population in a diseased area. Soon after Wisconsin in February 2002 became the first state east of the Mississippi River to have deer afflicted with the disease, authorities arrived at a deer-reduction strategy as the best way to fight the problem.

It's not clear by how much the DNR wants to reduce the deer population in Kenosha and Walworth counties.

Two zones west of Madison - where the disease first surfaced - are already in place. In one, the goal is to cut the deer population by about half; in the other the goal is as close to zero as possible.

Creating zones in Kenosha and Walworth counties would allow consideration of such options as lengthening the deer season, allowing landowners to kill as many deer as they want and requiring hunters to shoot a doe before earning the right to shoot a buck.

Before a decision by the seven-member Natural Resources Board is made, the DNR will hold public meetings. A decision is not likely to be made until April, Hauge said.

"I would be very surprised if they didn't do something," said Sen. Neal Kedzie (R-Elkhorn), chairman of the Senate Environmental Resources Committee.

"Like it or not, we are going to have to deal with this disease."

David Ladd of Dodgeville, chairman of the Big Game Committee of the Wisconsin Conservation Congress, which advises the DNR on hunting and fishing matters, said the agency has done a good job so far.

"But it sure screws up deer hunting when they keep hammering us with these long seasons," Ladd said.

"I have concerns about a single deer here and there, and I hope they don't get down to a strategy of trying to get the deer population down to zero on those places, too."

Two distinct disease areas The finding of the positive deer near Paddock Lake means that chronic wasting disease is ranging across a broad swath of southern Wisconsin.

Hauge said it was "disturbing" to learn about Kenosha County, but he said most of Wisconsin shows no sign of this disease. Two years of tests have not yet found infected deer in the northern two-thirds of the state.

Thus far, the testing of 53,493 deer has produced 269 positives, according to state figures.

And rather than viewing chronic wasting disease as one vast problem, Hauge said the DNR sees Wisconsin as having two distinct areas of infection.

"It is not a continuous ribbon of CWD," Hauge said. "It does appear to look as if two different things are going on."

The first area, which began near Mount Horeb, covers parts of Dane, Iowa, Sauk, Richland, Grant and Green counties. The disease appears to be centered in western Dane and eastern Iowa counties and spreads outward, Hauge said. A total of 263 positive deer have been found in that area since early 2002.

Then, there are large blocks of land with no cases of chronic wasting disease, Hauge said.

The second area of infection covers parts of Walworth, Rock, and now, Kenosha counties.

The picture there is less clear. So far, only seven deer have tested positive, including four cases in Rock County and a deer that escaped from a Walworth County game farm for six months that the DNR does not officially count.

More than 800 deer have been tested in Rock County, but far fewer have been tested in Kenosha and Walworth counties, so Hauge said more deer must be tested to get a more accurate reading. For now, officials are only beginning to understand the extent of the problem.

The DNR is lumping three northern Illinois border counties into the area. Winnebago, Boone and McHenry counties in Illinois have reported 29 positive cases of chronic wasting disease, and Hauge believes those cases could be related to Wisconsin.

Illinois authorities are taking steps to reduce the deer population along the border, but officials there have said the state is not taking as aggressive a tack as Wisconsin.

Hauge noted that Illinois lacks as ardent a deer hunting culture as Wisconsin, and authorities had time on their side.

"We had a really monumental, emotional start to CWD in Wisconsin, and they had the benefit of watching from the sidelines and starting with a low-key rollout," Hauge said.

Background Eric M. Schauber, Ph.D.
Alan Woolf, Ph.D.

a little lengthy but not dnr biased
People who have attempted to investigate the technical and scientific foundation of the CWD abatement program in Wisconsin are likely familiar with Mike Miller and Elizabeth (Beth) Williams. They are frequent CWD research collaborators and colleagues from Colorado and Wyoming who have served as consultant-advisors to the Wisconsin DNR. When the Wisconsin DNR makes reference to basing its Chronic Wasting Disease Eradication program on the "best available science" the principle conduit for this science has been Miller and Williams.

Miller's most recent and primary contribution to the body of knowledge on CWD has been through the development of complex computer generated models to attempt to ". . . synthesize existing knowledge of CWD" towards the end of generating predictions on future outcomes. Among the conclusions of Miller and his colleagues from these simulation studies are that "CWD can cause extinction of host populations."

At the request of the Governor's Office and the Wisconsin DNR, John Cary - an academic support staff member of the UW Wildlife Ecology Department who possessed advanced computer programming expertise - developed a sophisticated computer model drawing heavily on the groundwork laid by Professor Miller. According to an External Review report of CWD Management in Wisconsin recently released by the Wisconsin DNR (Fischer, et. al. October 18, 2003, p. 18) Mr. Cary's model is "similar to previously published models on CWD management" and has as its "primary assumption" that CWD transmission is ". . . frequency-dependent rather than density-dependent. In a frequency-dependent model, an infected animal transmits disease to a given number of other animals, regardless of how many other animals are in the area."

Professor Miller's models and published research conclusions, coupled with Mr. Cary's replication of his model - complete with multimedia simulations of the extinction effect - were the primary tools to convince the Wisconsin State Legislature, the media, hunters, and the public at large that immediate and drastic action was necessary to avoid the collapse of the State's entire wild herd of white-tail deer.

Motivation for the Current Research Investigation
Aware of the Colorado experience and Wisconsin's "attempted eradication of all white-tailed deer within" the defined eradication zone, Schauber and Woolf reasoned that this is a "prominent management philosophy and a strategy likely to be considered by many agencies responsible for managing populations at risk for CWD."

Therefore they concluded that it would be "useful to critically examine the premises and empirical support of published CWD models." They maintain that science-based wildlife management can only advance ". . . if competing models and management alternatives are carefully explored in a decision-theoretic framework" as ". . . . all scientific knowledge is tentative and provisional, and science advances by repeatedly confronting hypotheses and models with logic and data."


Review of the Literature and Examination of Data
The authors reviewed published models of CWD epizootiology and concluded they share a "common assumption" of frequency-dependent transmission. "The idea of frequency-dependent transmission is based on the premise that opportunities for contact between an infectious individual and susceptible individuals are unaffected by population size (de Jong et. Al. 1995)." [This assumption of independence from population size or density serves to explain why the Wisconsin DNR initially determined that ALL deer in the affected area must be exterminated]

"The presumption of frequency-dependent versus density-dependent is critical to the predicted outcome of an epizootic: host-pathogen extinction versus host-pathogen coexistence." Witness a conclusion of Gross & Miller in one of their published reports: " . . . a disturbing result of this modeling exercise was our inability to identify a set of parameters that permits sustained coexistence of CWD in a wild deer population." [Layman's interpretation: this model predicts that once let loose in a population CWD marches on until it kills every deer!] Schauber & Woolf hasten to emphasize that "this dire outcome of CWD models is entirely a predictable consequence of the frequency-dependent assumption and does not stem from any particular known characteristic of CWD." [Emphasis mine]

The authors then proceed to review the characteristics of disease and animal behavior that determine whether a frequency-dependent model, a density-dependent model, or a combination of the two is most appropriate. They cite the CWD transmission hypothesis via bodily fluids through direct and indirect contact as a case that suggests density does make a difference. This combined with the tendency of animals to congregate on winter ranges argues that "exudates of an infected animal potentially can contact a larger number of animals" than if the population were more sparsely distributed. The authors also note that CWD has been found much more prevalent in captive cervid herds maintained at high densities than in free living herds. After outlining additional evidence for including at least some role for population density in CWD models, the authors note that in their examination of the model's mathematical structure, "even weakly density-dependent transmission may enable host-pathogen coexistence." [Layman interpretation: the deer survive in the face of CWD]. Their conclusion: "The many unknown aspects of CWD transmission prohibit robust prediction of the population impact." [Emphasis mine]

Empirical Evidence
The acid test of any theoretical model - no matter how intelligent is its construction - is the accuracy of its predictions. When the weatherman's model predicts a storm is coming, how often is it correct? In examining the empirical data offered by Miller et. al., the authors were surprised to find an error! Their field data contradicted their model output. They thus conclude that ". . . . the empirical age-prevalence relationships of CWD in free-living mule deer, particularly its rarity in older male deer, cannot be explained by the model and indicates that some important biological processes are missing from the model."

The authors also express concern with the 2001 version of the model that lumped together the data between the sexes, obscuring potential differences. Other difficulties in verifying the accuracy of the model's predictions were cited.

Management Implications
The frequency-dependent assumption that generates the dire consequence of extinction places a heavy burden on management action. It implies that Eradication will not successfully control the spread of the disease - "unless nearly 100% of the hosts are eliminated." The authors warn that embarking on Eradication and then failing to accomplish it 100% may simply "hasten the extinction of the host population without preventing disease spread to other populations." [Interesting to note that two Ph.D. scientists come to a similar conclusion as my 10th grade education neighbor-farmer: "there's no way they'll kill ALL those deer, just a waste of time and money!"]


The authors note that frequency-dependent CWD models "represent a small set of possible outcomes in wild populations. Other outcomes are also plausible and their actuality depends on the true (but unknown) relationships between transmission and population density, sex and age structure, and spatial structure." The risk of placing unswerving faith in an untested model is that any "modeler with understanding of the fundamentals of ecological theory and no consideration for the validity of assumptions [Emphasis mine]" could produce models to justify whatever management action is deemed most desirable.

The authors conclude that the current state of knowledge of CWD points to an "urgent need for research into the transmission dynamics of CWD to firmly base management decisions on the best available science." At present lacking this adequate scientific base, they recommend a decision-theoretic framework be used to analyze the potential benefits and costs of alternative management actions.

Given the uncertain guidance available from the current base of science, the authors raise a number of practical concerns with the "eradication solution."

It remains an open question whether such extreme culling programs will be logistically or politically feasible, particularly if CWD introduction is not a one-time occurrence or the CWD agent persists in the environment.

Complete elimination of CWD from all North American deer and elk herds is unlikely, despite the best efforts of humans, suggesting that it could be reintroduced relatively frequently into disease-free populations.

Even if necessary and successful, defeating CWD via host eradication would come at cost, not only economic but also in terms of public perception of wildlife resources, acceptance of management paradigms, and interruption of the hunting tradition.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Editor Comments
The prime justification for the Eradication Program (as well as the total statewide ban on all baiting & feeding) is the probability that Wisconsin would lose its entire white-tailed deer herd to CWD. This dire consequence is based entirely on computer modeling exercises that have as a fundamental assumption that CWD is entirely independent of population density and dependent on frequency of contact.

If the frequency-dependence assumption is true (and therefore the loss of the entire state herd - as well as neighboring states - is credible), a significant reduction of the infected population that is less than 100% is unlikely to curtail expansion of the disease. Put in simple language, a B+ effort ain't gonna do the job.

So it is instructive to weigh the Probability that all the infected hosts could be killed. The barriers to achievement seem insurmountable. 1) The geographic area of known infection has expanded at least four fold, 2) a ring of counties surrounding the current Intensive Harvest zone counties were severely undersampled during the 2002 CWD testing - leaving plausible the possibility that the area of infection is much more widely dispersed than currently understood, 3) a significant outbreak has been discovered in Northern Illinois, 4) the state budget for eradication has been dramatically cut, 5) the DNRs available manpower for the CWD project has been severely strained, and 6) landowner opposition in the form of protected refuges continue to exist.

It is also instructive to identify and weigh the Costs of persisting against all odds. 1) What other programs suffer and to what degree because money and staff time is being siphoned off to fight the CWD war? 2) What are the costs of the tarnished reputation of the department due to the program making so many enemies? 3) What are the long term consequences to managing CWD when the bulk of money and resources is put into exterminating deer as opposed to expanded research? 4) What are the consequences to the sport of hunting? 5) To what degree is the goal of significantly reducing deer population across the state being compromised?6) What are the consequences of tainting the consumption of venison? 7) What are the consequences of risking human conflict as the battle stakes are raised and people become more polarized over this issue?

With the low probability of success and high costs (that rise as the effort becomes more dedicated), it would seem that to persist against the odds and bear the cost would logically require a high degree of confidence in the frequency-dependent assumption and in the overall predictive accuracy of the Miller-Cary theoretical modeling. One wonders, given the modest body of knowledge about CWD and the highly technical and complex nature of modeling, whether the managers and leadership of the DNR have the capacity to weigh the merits and competing scientific arguments?

When well-credentialed scientists like Schauber & Woolf come forward - in a respected, refereed journal - with a persuasive case that the known base of scientific knowledge is inadequate to justify a wild deer eradication project, the case for bold and decisive action is materially weakened. I believe taking in all that is NOW known about the particular case here in Wisconsin and the uncertainties of CWD knowledge in general argues strongly for a reassessment and selection of an alternative course of action. DNR Secretary Hassett and his staff would be wise to follow the advise of Hippocrates in Epidemics, Bk. I, Sect. XI. "As to diseases, make a habit of two things—to help, or at least to do no harm."

At present the "Harm" is painfully clear; the "Helping" is not.