Last February, officials from the National Veterinary Services Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, discovered that tissue samples taken from three deer killed during the 2001 hunting season near Mt. Horeb, Wis., tested positive for chronic wasting disease, a fatal brain disorder. Further testing among some 2,000 samples taken from the same area showed that 29 more Wisconsin white-tailed deer also tested positive for CWD.

Never before found in Wisconsin, these findings have caused alarm in a state whose deer population exceeds 1.5 million.

Concerned that CWD could spread throughout the deer population, both locally and statewide, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources developed a management plan to kill some 25,000 deer from a 389-square mile area in Dane, Iowa and Sauk counties in south-central Wisconsin, where the disease was first detected. They also implemented an expansive plan to perform surveillance testing on 50,000 deer throughout the state during 2002.

While many questions remain unanswered regarding CWD’s origin and how it spreads, faculty at UW-Madison who study deer and disease all agree: The swift and complete elimination of CWD from the state is necessary to protect Wisconsin’s health, culture, ecology and economy.