The St. Louis County Board of Commissioners, northern Chippewa bands and a coalition of hunters and conservationists have all come out against deer farming in hopes of stopping chronic wasting disease (CWD) from spreading between captive deer and the state's wild deer herd.
At a recent meeting of the Minnesota House Environment and Natural Resources Finance and Policy Committee, the groups voiced desire to stop permitting new deer farms and start dismantling the industry by having taxpayers fund a sweeping buyout program. One estimate put the price tag at $24 million.
St. Louis County Commissioner Patrick Boyle said in an interview this week that the county attorney's office is working on a public process to enact a freeze against any new deer farms in the county. The action was triggered by a unanimous vote of the county's seven commissioners, six of whom are deer hunters, he said.
Boyle said they were motivated by last year's finding of CWD on a deer farm in Beltrami County, the farthest north the disease has ever been detected in Minnesota. The case has alarmed state wildlife health officials because infected carcasses from the deer enclosure were dumped illegally on nearby public land. Taxpayers paid $190,000 for a security fence to cordon off the site, now polluted with CWD contagions that could persist on the land for more than a decade.
State officials have documented how CWD-infected captive deer have been moved long distances in the commercial trade of deer bought and sold between farms, often for pay-to-hunt shooting experiences or for the breeding of monster bucks. Various outbreaks of CWD in wild deer have been linked to deer farms in Minnesota, Wisconsin and elsewhere. Minnesota already has spent $14 million to combat the disease, an always-fatal neurological ailment that many believe could ruin the tradition of deer hunting, a $500 million-a-year activity that touches every county in the state.
Rep. Rick Hansen, who chairs the natural resources committee, said he'll hold a second hearing before November's firearm deer season to receive more testimony about CWD and deer farms. The state regulates the industry, now composed of 253 herds. Some herd owners have said captive deer are being infected by diseased wild deer, not vice versa.
At the initial hearing Sept. 14, a new coalition that included deer hunting associations, the National Wildlife Federation and the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa presented a resolution calling for an immediate moratorium on any new deer or elk farms and for the buyout of existing operations. The animals are classified as "cervids."
"The movement of captive cervids for the benefit of captive cervid operators has proven to present an unacceptable risk to our state's wild deer, moose, and elk and those who hunt, photograph, or otherwise value wild cervids on the landscape,'' the resolution states.
