Reality: CWD is here to stay
DNR's new plan is more of the same failed approach
Near the end of 2008, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) released its draft plan for managing chronic wasting disease (CWD) over the next 10 years.
The state's Natural Resources Board has already endorsed one feature of the plan, agreeing in January to a statewide ban on deer baiting and feeding, and passing on that recommendation to the Legislature.
But Madison activist John Stauber, who's led the charge to get the state to see CWD as a human health risk, thinks the plan is doomed to fail.
"They don't know how to think out of the box, because they created the box," says Stauber of the DNR. "There's just not a fundamental, rational explanation for the DNR's game plan."
The "box" Stauber refers to is the DNR's Holy Grail of wildlife management: deer hunting. In essence, Stauber says, the DNR wants to keep deer hunting intact and deer hunting license sales high. Thus the DNR wants to show that CWD is under control, when in fact little is being done to contain it.
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