Wisconsin might relax deer farm fence rules

Todd Richmond | Associated Press

MADISON - Wisconsin deer farms and hunting preserves would no longer have to participate in the state's chronic wasting disease monitoring program to receive Department of Natural Resources approval for their fences under an emergency rule the agency's board is expected to take up next week.

The exemption is meant to spare farmers the cost of complying with stiffer federal herd monitoring requirements to remain in the program, DNR officials say. Critics counter such a move could allow CWD to spread.

The fatal neurological disease was first found in Wisconsin in 2002. No human cases are known, but biologists advise hunters not to eat animals that have tested positive for the disease.

"If anything, the department should be increasing the fencing requirement for deer herds and not undermining the increased federal regulation," George Meyer, executive director of the Wisconsin Wildlife Federation, said in an email.

Right now, deer farmers and ranchers must enroll in the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection's CWD Herd Status Program to win DNR approval for single fencing and be allowed to export deer. The program requires farmers and ranchers to keep records of every deer they add or subtract from their herds as well as records of all CWD test results on their deer. If they don't join the program, they must install double or solid fencing.

Farms larger than 80 acres that aren't double or solid fenced and aren't enrolled in the monitoring program must test some of their deer for CWD annually.

According to a DNR memo, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has imposed new standards for such monitoring programs, including requiring farmers to have a licensed veterinarian physically count each deer and keeping two forms of identification on each animal. The state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection has put the rules in place for its program here, the memo said.

DNR officials wrote in the memo that scores of small deer farms might drop out of the program because they can't afford the cost of compliance, particularly the cost of hiring a veterinarian to conduct inventories. If they leave the program they would have to build more costly double or solid fences. Some deer farmers who can't comply may simply decide to illegally release their captive deer, the memo said.

The DNR's proposed emergency rule would allow farmers to opt out of the monitoring program without upgrading to double or solid fencing. Large farms would not have to test deer to remain single-fenced. The farms still wouldn't be able to export deer, however.

"For certain individual deer farmers, these rules would ... (reduce) the economic impact of new federal regulations," the memo said.

The DNR board is set to vote on the rule on Wednesday. The DNR memo said Wisconsin farmers will be subject to the new program regulations on Dec. 10, a day after the vote. A USDA spokeswoman, however, said the regulations went into effect in 2012, meaning Wisconsin farmers have been complying with them for three years already. DNR spokesman Jim Dick had no immediate comment when asked to explain the discrepancy.

Rick Vojtik and Laurie Seale, president and vice president of Whitetails of Wisconsin, an association of Wisconsin deer farmers and hunting preserves, didn't immediately return messages seeking comment on the rule.

Meyer said in a telephone interview that he couldn't believe the DNR was suggesting farmers would simply release their herds rather than comply with the requirements and the agency should step up fence enforcement rather than go soft on it. The Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection announced Thursday that a deer on an Oneida County hunting preserve tested positive for chronic wasting disease.

The DNR noted in its memo that farmers must still build fences and won't be able to export deer off their farms, decreasing the chances CWD might spread.