Saturday, January 28, 2006
CWD in Muscle Meat & Other News
Just posted an article on the CWD Watch Website on this article in Science Journal about finding CWD Prions in the muscle meat of severely diseased Mule Deer. See our complete analysis at http://www.Caids-wi.org/science-journal.html
It was interesting to see that the Wisconsin State DNR may finally be understanding that inflaming the public with unfounded threats vis-a-vis CWD just isn't a good idea. For a change no alarmist rhetoric coming from the department. In addition, the state department officially charged with being stewards of public health were quite clear about the limited insight from this study. The Channel 15 News website reported the comments of department spokesperson Stephanie Marquis: "At this point there's nothing new to do with the public health risk with this . . . . We want to error on the side of caution and still have people get their meat tested but we still haven't seen CWD in humans and so we don't want this research to be alarmist unnecessarily."
But the WMTV reporter did manage to attribute an alarmist statement to University of Wisconsin Prion Disease Researcher Judd Aiken: " he says you shouldn't eat any deer shot in the eradication zone." If indeed this attribution is accurate, perhaps Aiken is the first person to ever show signs of cognitive impairment from contact with CWD prions. He has after all a long history of dealing with these so-called infectious agents in numerous variations of their form - bovine, mink, sheep, and deer. In fact Aiken's Department is fingered by some as the possible Garden of Eden for the introduction of CWD into the Deer Herd. In the 1990s, they were Midwest pioneers in exploring various forms of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy and had research subjects at the Ag Research Facility west of Madison - less than 15 miles from the core of the disease zone. How that infected material and infected animals were disposed of is an intriguing question that University has never been able to answer.
In any case, one wonders how in the world the deer population is going to be controlled if no one should eat venison from the eradication zone - which now covers 11 counties in Wisconsin and several counties in Northern Illinois?
Since one cannot prove a negative, no scientist can say with certainty that one could not catch a fatal disease from eating venison. The best evidence we have is that to date there has been no record of a single death or any evidence of human contamination.
Furthermore, in looking at any other meat product, a scientist must also allow that a fatal condition could indeed result from consuming beef, pork, turkey or chicken. And in this case, there are some actual examples of deaths. Wonder if researcher Aiken has ever heard of E-Coli? Perhaps the prudent behavior is to avoid all forms of meat and poultry for there is established risk in consuming all of them? In fact I think I've heard of E-Coli contamination of vegetables (this happens through the water used to rinse the vegetables prior to shipment) so we better take them off our diet too.
As we said in our web page report on this subject, the most worthwhile point to come out of this new info on CWD is to insist that the Wisconsin DNR change their CWD testing program to emphasize food safety, full disclosure of test results, and rapid reporting of results to hunters and venison consumers.
After four years of failure, it is clear we cannot shoot our way into eradication of the disease and eradication of all potentially infected deer. Lets turn to a common sense approach to providing hunters the best available testing program and support research that will identify the cause of the disease as well as tools for combating it.
It was interesting to see that the Wisconsin State DNR may finally be understanding that inflaming the public with unfounded threats vis-a-vis CWD just isn't a good idea. For a change no alarmist rhetoric coming from the department. In addition, the state department officially charged with being stewards of public health were quite clear about the limited insight from this study. The Channel 15 News website reported the comments of department spokesperson Stephanie Marquis: "At this point there's nothing new to do with the public health risk with this . . . . We want to error on the side of caution and still have people get their meat tested but we still haven't seen CWD in humans and so we don't want this research to be alarmist unnecessarily."
But the WMTV reporter did manage to attribute an alarmist statement to University of Wisconsin Prion Disease Researcher Judd Aiken: " he says you shouldn't eat any deer shot in the eradication zone." If indeed this attribution is accurate, perhaps Aiken is the first person to ever show signs of cognitive impairment from contact with CWD prions. He has after all a long history of dealing with these so-called infectious agents in numerous variations of their form - bovine, mink, sheep, and deer. In fact Aiken's Department is fingered by some as the possible Garden of Eden for the introduction of CWD into the Deer Herd. In the 1990s, they were Midwest pioneers in exploring various forms of Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy and had research subjects at the Ag Research Facility west of Madison - less than 15 miles from the core of the disease zone. How that infected material and infected animals were disposed of is an intriguing question that University has never been able to answer.
In any case, one wonders how in the world the deer population is going to be controlled if no one should eat venison from the eradication zone - which now covers 11 counties in Wisconsin and several counties in Northern Illinois?
Since one cannot prove a negative, no scientist can say with certainty that one could not catch a fatal disease from eating venison. The best evidence we have is that to date there has been no record of a single death or any evidence of human contamination.
Furthermore, in looking at any other meat product, a scientist must also allow that a fatal condition could indeed result from consuming beef, pork, turkey or chicken. And in this case, there are some actual examples of deaths. Wonder if researcher Aiken has ever heard of E-Coli? Perhaps the prudent behavior is to avoid all forms of meat and poultry for there is established risk in consuming all of them? In fact I think I've heard of E-Coli contamination of vegetables (this happens through the water used to rinse the vegetables prior to shipment) so we better take them off our diet too.
As we said in our web page report on this subject, the most worthwhile point to come out of this new info on CWD is to insist that the Wisconsin DNR change their CWD testing program to emphasize food safety, full disclosure of test results, and rapid reporting of results to hunters and venison consumers.
After four years of failure, it is clear we cannot shoot our way into eradication of the disease and eradication of all potentially infected deer. Lets turn to a common sense approach to providing hunters the best available testing program and support research that will identify the cause of the disease as well as tools for combating it.
Wednesday, April 27, 2005
Our Whitetail Heritage
Deer Hunters will enjoy getting acquainted with Rob Wegner's contributions on his new website "Our Whitetail Heritage" www.UplandsDeer.org/heritage
In the site Rob will offer periodic articles on the Deer Hunting tradition and an introduction to several books he has either authored or in the case of several classics books he has brought back into print and updated with an editorial forward.
In the site Rob will offer periodic articles on the Deer Hunting tradition and an introduction to several books he has either authored or in the case of several classics books he has brought back into print and updated with an editorial forward.
Monday, April 25, 2005
Wisconsin CWD Update - April 25, 2005
Things have been pretty quiet in Wisconsin on CWD front.
The DNR has been working on trying to get the Genie back in the bottle while not embarassing themselves in the process.
They've finally figured out that depicting CWD as a highly contagious, rapidly spreading, fatal and almost unstoppable disease with the potential to wipe out the entire deer herd in the state created massive problems for them. - beginning with the subsequent discovery that it was NOT confined to a small manageable area of infection near Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin - but found extensively across Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois.
The insurgents (infected deer) have turned out to be much more widespread and inhabit such a large territory that it is impossible to wipe them out by herd eradication - which was the only treatment method the DNR would consider as viable.
Making matters more difficult were the financial realities of shrinking budgets, sagging economy, and the fact that insufficient numbers of hunters could be energized to slaughter deer at a rate to bring population levels down to levels needed by the doctrine they adopted.
They have also discovered a reality - first observed in Colorado - that the more you test for CWD the more you discover how widespread it has been. Thus testing outside of the previously established zone of known CWD is a double edged sword. If tests outside the zone come up negative then it helps with PR in that they can say they have confined the disease. But as has been the case, tests outside of the zone also discover new cases - which obligate (under the previous policy) the DNR to expand the War Zone and thus make the task of herd and disease eradication that much more challenging.
So the genius solution to the above Gordian Knot - with a distinctive Orwellian twist - is to declare new cases as "isolated" temporary migrants from the original zone rather than a sample of a larger population of infected animals in the new region. Thus the CWD zone no longer automatically expands when new cases are found. Creative GovSpeak reduces them to an asterick to be watched in the future.
Another development in the larger CWD arena that has relevance to Wisconsin is recent research on a new testing regime called Conformation-Dependent Immunoassay (CDI) by a team of blue chip researchers that includes Stanley B. Prusiner - one of the pioneers in discovering and identifying this class of Deformed Prion Protein diseases. This research has - among other findings - cast doubt on the efficacy of the Immunohistochemistry (IHC) procedure as the "Gold Standard" of detecting prion disease. This team of researchers maintains that IHC too often fails to detect positive cases - thus declaring false negatives. They maintain that the CDI ought to replace the IHC as a much more accurate procedure.
How the above relates to Wisconsin is that our Wisconsin lab has been invalidating positive initial CWD screening tests using ELIZA immunoassay's when they are not subsequently confirmed by the IHC process. Hundreds of cases of initial screens of positive CWD have been thrown out as false using this procedure. Prusiner's recent published research casts serious doubt on the integrity of this policy. The bottom line. Some Wisconsin hunters consumed venison that the DNR reported to them as "CWD safe" when they were suspect and the geographic range of known CWD is much more extensive than the conservative reporting by the DNR indicates.
Now I'd like to underscore a point and not mimic the Chicken Little mantra initially followed by the DNR. Even though CWD is much more extensively found in Wisconsin than initially thought: 1) It affects only a small minority of the deer, 2) A Positive CWD report usually is only a precursor to the clinical disease (a parallel might be that a positive HIV can signal that AIDS may follow. . . but some, like Magic Johnson, do not progress to AIDS itself), 3) There has been no documented case - world wide - of anyone getting seriously ill from consuming CWD infected venison, 4) According to what is known about where in the body CWD prions are found, a properly dressed out deer that happened to have CWD would have essentially zero chance to including a CWD prion within the venison saved for consumption, and 5) Contrary to Chicken Little pronouncements - by those with other interests to promote - CWD spreads at a glacial pace and has no record of wiping out or massively infecting even a tiny region of wild deer population.
Bottom Line: CWD should not be ignored; it is an element to be considered in the management of deer and in advising deer hunters. But folks the wolf is not at the door; the sky is not falling. There is time for an intelligent, informed, and scientifically current response to the situation.
Actually a much more relevant and important use of the money that has been poured into CWD abatement is research like Prusiner's - whose primary focus is on the only known prion disease to affect humans - Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. CJD has killed humans; CWD has not. And while CJD is a very rare disease, research in this area may uncover clues to a much more prevalent human disease - Alsheimers.
Even the Wisconsin, DNR has bigger fish under their responsibilities for Deer and Deer Hunting than futzing around with trying to eradicate CWD. In at least one third of the state, the deer population is out of control - causing millions of dollars of loss due to crop damage, forest degradation, deer-vehicle damage, and loss of life due to deer collisions. Additionally across the entire state, the sport of deer hunting is declining - removing our major tool for keeping the deer herd in check. For the past four years the agency has had its eye on the hole instead of the donut. Perhaps this will change.
--Ross
The DNR has been working on trying to get the Genie back in the bottle while not embarassing themselves in the process.
They've finally figured out that depicting CWD as a highly contagious, rapidly spreading, fatal and almost unstoppable disease with the potential to wipe out the entire deer herd in the state created massive problems for them. - beginning with the subsequent discovery that it was NOT confined to a small manageable area of infection near Mt. Horeb, Wisconsin - but found extensively across Southern Wisconsin and Northern Illinois.
The insurgents (infected deer) have turned out to be much more widespread and inhabit such a large territory that it is impossible to wipe them out by herd eradication - which was the only treatment method the DNR would consider as viable.
Making matters more difficult were the financial realities of shrinking budgets, sagging economy, and the fact that insufficient numbers of hunters could be energized to slaughter deer at a rate to bring population levels down to levels needed by the doctrine they adopted.
They have also discovered a reality - first observed in Colorado - that the more you test for CWD the more you discover how widespread it has been. Thus testing outside of the previously established zone of known CWD is a double edged sword. If tests outside the zone come up negative then it helps with PR in that they can say they have confined the disease. But as has been the case, tests outside of the zone also discover new cases - which obligate (under the previous policy) the DNR to expand the War Zone and thus make the task of herd and disease eradication that much more challenging.
So the genius solution to the above Gordian Knot - with a distinctive Orwellian twist - is to declare new cases as "isolated" temporary migrants from the original zone rather than a sample of a larger population of infected animals in the new region. Thus the CWD zone no longer automatically expands when new cases are found. Creative GovSpeak reduces them to an asterick to be watched in the future.
Another development in the larger CWD arena that has relevance to Wisconsin is recent research on a new testing regime called Conformation-Dependent Immunoassay (CDI) by a team of blue chip researchers that includes Stanley B. Prusiner - one of the pioneers in discovering and identifying this class of Deformed Prion Protein diseases. This research has - among other findings - cast doubt on the efficacy of the Immunohistochemistry (IHC) procedure as the "Gold Standard" of detecting prion disease. This team of researchers maintains that IHC too often fails to detect positive cases - thus declaring false negatives. They maintain that the CDI ought to replace the IHC as a much more accurate procedure.
How the above relates to Wisconsin is that our Wisconsin lab has been invalidating positive initial CWD screening tests using ELIZA immunoassay's when they are not subsequently confirmed by the IHC process. Hundreds of cases of initial screens of positive CWD have been thrown out as false using this procedure. Prusiner's recent published research casts serious doubt on the integrity of this policy. The bottom line. Some Wisconsin hunters consumed venison that the DNR reported to them as "CWD safe" when they were suspect and the geographic range of known CWD is much more extensive than the conservative reporting by the DNR indicates.
Now I'd like to underscore a point and not mimic the Chicken Little mantra initially followed by the DNR. Even though CWD is much more extensively found in Wisconsin than initially thought: 1) It affects only a small minority of the deer, 2) A Positive CWD report usually is only a precursor to the clinical disease (a parallel might be that a positive HIV can signal that AIDS may follow. . . but some, like Magic Johnson, do not progress to AIDS itself), 3) There has been no documented case - world wide - of anyone getting seriously ill from consuming CWD infected venison, 4) According to what is known about where in the body CWD prions are found, a properly dressed out deer that happened to have CWD would have essentially zero chance to including a CWD prion within the venison saved for consumption, and 5) Contrary to Chicken Little pronouncements - by those with other interests to promote - CWD spreads at a glacial pace and has no record of wiping out or massively infecting even a tiny region of wild deer population.
Bottom Line: CWD should not be ignored; it is an element to be considered in the management of deer and in advising deer hunters. But folks the wolf is not at the door; the sky is not falling. There is time for an intelligent, informed, and scientifically current response to the situation.
Actually a much more relevant and important use of the money that has been poured into CWD abatement is research like Prusiner's - whose primary focus is on the only known prion disease to affect humans - Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. CJD has killed humans; CWD has not. And while CJD is a very rare disease, research in this area may uncover clues to a much more prevalent human disease - Alsheimers.
Even the Wisconsin, DNR has bigger fish under their responsibilities for Deer and Deer Hunting than futzing around with trying to eradicate CWD. In at least one third of the state, the deer population is out of control - causing millions of dollars of loss due to crop damage, forest degradation, deer-vehicle damage, and loss of life due to deer collisions. Additionally across the entire state, the sport of deer hunting is declining - removing our major tool for keeping the deer herd in check. For the past four years the agency has had its eye on the hole instead of the donut. Perhaps this will change.
--Ross
Friday, January 07, 2005
Wisconsin DNR hates bowhunters?
Heard from a dedicated Wisconsin Bowhunter today - Dan Infall who writes:
"Does the Wisconsin DNR hate bowhunters?
Lets see if I got his right, They decided to whack a huge percentage of the deer in my hunting area deeming it CWD land ( Even though no deer where found in my entire county haveing the disease).
So in order to kill all these deer they decided to make more opportuniies for hunters.
#1) They are opening bow season a week later than last year.
#2) October 28th they open gun season untill March. I could compete against all the gun hunters if I wear blaze orange and feel like putting up with the spookyist deer in the world.
#3) gun season when bow hunters normally rut hunt.
#4) So I get about 1 month of early season hunting, and they were gracius enough to force me to try and whack a doe before Im allowed to kill a buck.
Yep. they must hate bowhunters."
Dan also writes about Gun Safety:
"Ok, so the DNR has decided to wipe out the herd in S.E. Wisc. all in the name of CWD.
Lets consider the safety issues once.
No limits in the CWD area with the exception of shooting a does to get buck tags.
So you draw in a ton of hunters into a small area who can shoot any deer they see. If "its brown its down", type of guys. The woods was full of tons of guys, some sitting, some driving and pushing. One guy gets a doe, then they can shoot anything. (The season lasts over a month with all these gun hunters but the media never lets the general public know.) So, we ended up with rabbit and pheasant hunters all over the woods and fields without orange on. I even stopped a pheasant hunter and warned him, he was wearing all brown!!!!
And... Catch this, if they find a deer in the area that actualy has the disease, they open it up for RIFLES..... Did they forget why they outlawed rifles in these suburban areas in the 1st place? SAFETY!!!
How about only shooting bucks with at least 4 points on one side? or at least 8 pointers? You know a size slot? Let a couple small ones make it, this will be more appealing to hunters knowing there will be even bigger bucks the next year, and now a guy has to MAKE SURE OF HIS TARGET.
But we wouldn't want it to be a little safer out there would we???????"
Dan Infalt
"Does the Wisconsin DNR hate bowhunters?
Lets see if I got his right, They decided to whack a huge percentage of the deer in my hunting area deeming it CWD land ( Even though no deer where found in my entire county haveing the disease).
So in order to kill all these deer they decided to make more opportuniies for hunters.
#1) They are opening bow season a week later than last year.
#2) October 28th they open gun season untill March. I could compete against all the gun hunters if I wear blaze orange and feel like putting up with the spookyist deer in the world.
#3) gun season when bow hunters normally rut hunt.
#4) So I get about 1 month of early season hunting, and they were gracius enough to force me to try and whack a doe before Im allowed to kill a buck.
Yep. they must hate bowhunters."
Dan also writes about Gun Safety:
"Ok, so the DNR has decided to wipe out the herd in S.E. Wisc. all in the name of CWD.
Lets consider the safety issues once.
No limits in the CWD area with the exception of shooting a does to get buck tags.
So you draw in a ton of hunters into a small area who can shoot any deer they see. If "its brown its down", type of guys. The woods was full of tons of guys, some sitting, some driving and pushing. One guy gets a doe, then they can shoot anything. (The season lasts over a month with all these gun hunters but the media never lets the general public know.) So, we ended up with rabbit and pheasant hunters all over the woods and fields without orange on. I even stopped a pheasant hunter and warned him, he was wearing all brown!!!!
And... Catch this, if they find a deer in the area that actualy has the disease, they open it up for RIFLES..... Did they forget why they outlawed rifles in these suburban areas in the 1st place? SAFETY!!!
How about only shooting bucks with at least 4 points on one side? or at least 8 pointers? You know a size slot? Let a couple small ones make it, this will be more appealing to hunters knowing there will be even bigger bucks the next year, and now a guy has to MAKE SURE OF HIS TARGET.
But we wouldn't want it to be a little safer out there would we???????"
Dan Infalt
Saturday, December 11, 2004
DNR CWD Policy eradicating Hunting instead of Disease?
Here's a note I received today from an avid deer hunter is Sauk County.
"I have property West of Plain and since the discovery of a CWD infected deer 2 miles from my land, I will most certainly be in the eradication zone next year. My passion is bowhunting and I gun hunt for traditional reasons. The seasons the DNR have in place in the CWD zones do not satisfy my idea of hunting. I will most likely close my land to all hunting, and lease property in another area or hunt the Dakota's . Most of the landowners in the area feel the same way. We will simply not view the whitetail as a pest!! "
--ross
"I have property West of Plain and since the discovery of a CWD infected deer 2 miles from my land, I will most certainly be in the eradication zone next year. My passion is bowhunting and I gun hunt for traditional reasons. The seasons the DNR have in place in the CWD zones do not satisfy my idea of hunting. I will most likely close my land to all hunting, and lease property in another area or hunt the Dakota's . Most of the landowners in the area feel the same way. We will simply not view the whitetail as a pest!! "
--ross
Tuesday, December 07, 2004
Bounties and Sharpshooters
Was at a meeting with hunters interested in creating a chapter of the Quality Deer Management Association. Professor Tom Heberlein of "Fire in the Sistine Chapel" fame was a guest speaker.
In the social hour following the meeting, several of the guys commented on the DNR's bounty hunting and sharp shooting campaigns. The gist of the sentiments were a majestic game animal is being turned into a pest to be eradicated and a venerable sport is being tarnished by "waste disposal workers" using rifles.
The continued use of these two controversial "control methods" by the DNR underscores how the agency continues to be in the panic mode mind set that initially launched the deer war in southern Wisconsin.
Set in a larger frame of reference, CWD is one of many costs of an overabundant and ineptly managed Wisconsin deer population. The big picture long term challenge is bringing this population under control and keeping it that way. The whitetail deer hunter is at the core of this solution. Unfortunately the recent trend is fewer people taking up the sport.
It seems to me that whatever population control measures are used in Southern Wisconsin to control CWD risk have to also be consistent with an overall population program for the entire state.
It is in this setting that I find Bounty Programs counter-productive. The DNR's own commissioned surveys indicate the true hunter finds little appeal in these incentive programs. Such programs primarily appeal to people on the fringe of the hunting culture. Any Bozo can go get a gun and go into the woods to shoot at deer for prize money. Such people have no interest in the game animal itself, hunter safety, hunting regulations or the culture surrounding the sport. The recent murders in northern Wisconsin underscore the important role of hunter education, mentoring and hunting culture. Bottom line, the new "earn a buck" bounty program draws the wrong people into the woods with guns.
While the new "earn a buck" bounty programs tarnish the deer hunter, sharpshooting programs tarnish the animal and cost the taxpayers quite a bit of money to boot! When was the last time you were invited to a coyote feed or a rat barbecue? The more we resort to eradication methods, the more the game animal and its meat is reduced to the level of a pest. At this rate of depreciation, I can see down the road that giving a friend a present of venison sausage will be greeted with about as much enthusiasm as a can of spam! Protein fit only for the homeless.
So one wonders how, in the long term, does the DNR control the deer population by denigrating the sport of hunting and debasing the game animal to pest status? How does bounty hunting and sharpshooting reverse the course? It seems like it will only accelerate the decline of hunting and thus require increasing application of these expensive and controversial solutions.
--ross
In the social hour following the meeting, several of the guys commented on the DNR's bounty hunting and sharp shooting campaigns. The gist of the sentiments were a majestic game animal is being turned into a pest to be eradicated and a venerable sport is being tarnished by "waste disposal workers" using rifles.
The continued use of these two controversial "control methods" by the DNR underscores how the agency continues to be in the panic mode mind set that initially launched the deer war in southern Wisconsin.
Set in a larger frame of reference, CWD is one of many costs of an overabundant and ineptly managed Wisconsin deer population. The big picture long term challenge is bringing this population under control and keeping it that way. The whitetail deer hunter is at the core of this solution. Unfortunately the recent trend is fewer people taking up the sport.
It seems to me that whatever population control measures are used in Southern Wisconsin to control CWD risk have to also be consistent with an overall population program for the entire state.
It is in this setting that I find Bounty Programs counter-productive. The DNR's own commissioned surveys indicate the true hunter finds little appeal in these incentive programs. Such programs primarily appeal to people on the fringe of the hunting culture. Any Bozo can go get a gun and go into the woods to shoot at deer for prize money. Such people have no interest in the game animal itself, hunter safety, hunting regulations or the culture surrounding the sport. The recent murders in northern Wisconsin underscore the important role of hunter education, mentoring and hunting culture. Bottom line, the new "earn a buck" bounty program draws the wrong people into the woods with guns.
While the new "earn a buck" bounty programs tarnish the deer hunter, sharpshooting programs tarnish the animal and cost the taxpayers quite a bit of money to boot! When was the last time you were invited to a coyote feed or a rat barbecue? The more we resort to eradication methods, the more the game animal and its meat is reduced to the level of a pest. At this rate of depreciation, I can see down the road that giving a friend a present of venison sausage will be greeted with about as much enthusiasm as a can of spam! Protein fit only for the homeless.
So one wonders how, in the long term, does the DNR control the deer population by denigrating the sport of hunting and debasing the game animal to pest status? How does bounty hunting and sharpshooting reverse the course? It seems like it will only accelerate the decline of hunting and thus require increasing application of these expensive and controversial solutions.
--ross
Thursday, May 13, 2004
Wisconsin WMD?
Ever since the Wisconsin DNR launched the CWD offensive, the parallels to the Vietnam War have been striking. DNR managers in the field calling themselves "Commanders." Talk about the tremendous "firepower" available to the DNR via organizing the hunting community behind the game plan. The rural communities where the infected deer (Viet Cong) resided were essentially "invaded" by DNR sharpshooters and non-resident shooter-hunters on search and destroy missions. While great efforts were made - with partial success - in organizing the local populous in the War effort to root out the Viet Cong (whitetail deer), many people in the villages resisted and provided refuges for the enemy (deer). I could continue writing the parallels, but you get the idea. Perhaps one more. Launching an "unwinnable" war, refusing to recognize the mounting signs that it is "unwinnable" and continuing to commit financial and human resources into fighting a lost cause while other important needs are starving for these same resources (LBJ lost his Presidency and his "Great Society" programs went down the drain because of the Guns vs Butter tradeoff the war required).
Recently it has struck me that there is also strong parallel to the present War. And curiously it involves Wisconsin own John Kerry but with different spelling: John Cary. Mr. Cary was the UW programmer who, at the request of the DNR, prepared the computer model and multi-media show the agency used to scare the legislature, the hunting community, and northwoods small business people into believing a billion dollar crisis was upon us that required swift, bold, and decisive action to thwart it before it was too late. And thus the 15 million dollar War Against the Deer was launched in rural Mt. Horeb, Barneveld, Black Earth and Arena Wisconsin.
Now 2 years later, we hear little of the Cary model. It never was validated by the Academic community and in fact was challenged in a professional journal by scientists whose credentials in deer population dynamics far exceed those of Mr. Cary. The dire doom and gloom model forecast of the certain extinction of Wisconsin deer herd simply doesn't get any credibility these days. Even the DNR has quietly walked away from this Weapons of Mass Destruction myth. Witness how when an infected deer is found in new territory, the DNR is now willing to plod along at a snails pace determining if the area should be invaded (or Not) by armies of shooters and named an official War Zone. The Cary model would stress the utmost importance of extinguishing the infection at the earliest possible stage. So by their actions (or inaction) you know the DNR no longer believes its own WMD myth.
While no WMDs have been verified, the Deer Wars continue because the bureaucracy that created the myth and launched the War is unable to let go of its creation and adapt to the reality that the sky isn't falling afterall.
--ross
Recently it has struck me that there is also strong parallel to the present War. And curiously it involves Wisconsin own John Kerry but with different spelling: John Cary. Mr. Cary was the UW programmer who, at the request of the DNR, prepared the computer model and multi-media show the agency used to scare the legislature, the hunting community, and northwoods small business people into believing a billion dollar crisis was upon us that required swift, bold, and decisive action to thwart it before it was too late. And thus the 15 million dollar War Against the Deer was launched in rural Mt. Horeb, Barneveld, Black Earth and Arena Wisconsin.
Now 2 years later, we hear little of the Cary model. It never was validated by the Academic community and in fact was challenged in a professional journal by scientists whose credentials in deer population dynamics far exceed those of Mr. Cary. The dire doom and gloom model forecast of the certain extinction of Wisconsin deer herd simply doesn't get any credibility these days. Even the DNR has quietly walked away from this Weapons of Mass Destruction myth. Witness how when an infected deer is found in new territory, the DNR is now willing to plod along at a snails pace determining if the area should be invaded (or Not) by armies of shooters and named an official War Zone. The Cary model would stress the utmost importance of extinguishing the infection at the earliest possible stage. So by their actions (or inaction) you know the DNR no longer believes its own WMD myth.
While no WMDs have been verified, the Deer Wars continue because the bureaucracy that created the myth and launched the War is unable to let go of its creation and adapt to the reality that the sky isn't falling afterall.
--ross
Wednesday, March 31, 2004
Unit 70A Harvest Data tell true story of Success of the CWD Management Plan
Check out this article on the 15 year harvest data from Deer Management Unit 70A - the only unit located 100% within the eradication zone and thus the only reliable measure of what has been the harvest impact of the special CWD program.
