LEAVE THE DEER ALONE ALL Edition

• Published in: Wisconsin state journal
• Main Author: Bennett, Carla
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Madison, Wis Madison Newspapers, Inc 02.12.2002
• ISSN: 0749-405X

Now, decades later, Wisconsin wildlife officials are calling on hunters, landowners and sharpshooters to kill deer en masse in a desperate attempt to curb the chronic wasting disease (CWD) that is spreading through Wisconsin's and 10 other states' deer herds. This situation has come about through gross mismanagement of deer and other wildlife by our hunter-run wildlife agencies. CWD, also known as mad deer disease, is a deadly brain disease, a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy caused by misshapen proteins called prions. Their shape allows them to hook onto normal prions and convert them into the diseased form. CWD now has spread to deer and elk in 11 states and into Canada. No one knows when or where it will end, which animals may have or be incubating the disease, or if CWD can infect people with a new variation of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJD), as mad cow disease did in England.