On May 25 the Minnesota Board of Animal Health (BAH) announced that 12 additional white-tailed deer tested positive for chronic wasting disease as part of its ongoing investigation of a farm in Beltrami County.
The DNR believes the situation at the Beltrami County deer farm significantly changes the risk assessment and concern about CWD in Minnesota.
Following the discovery of the initial positive case in the Beltrami County herd, deer remains from the farm were discovered on adjacent county-managed land, elevating the risk to wild deer. DNR and University of Minnesota researchers immediately surveyed the land for additional remains and confirmed the presence of CWD-causing prions in at least one bone.
Based on the findings in Beltrami County, last week BAH quarantined five additional farmed deer herds because of possible CWD exposure. The additional herds are located in Hennepin, Kanabec, Mille Lacs, Morrison and Mower counties in Minnesota.
The DNR is committed to limiting the spread of CWD in wild deer and to the health of Minnesota’s wild deer herd, and believe the urgent situation requires a comprehensive approach to protect the health of Minnesota’s wild deer.
Taking a proactive stance, the DNR will address the site of the deer remains in Beltrami County; reduce additional risk from Beltrami County through herd quarantine and thorough trace-outs to other herds; and move to a more proactive and preventative approach to addressing systemic gaps in the farmed deer system.
It is also coordinating with partners at the federal, state, and local level, and will work with Beltrami County to coordinate containment of the contaminated site on county-managed land where the deer remains were discovered.
The DNR will continue working with the Center for Prion Research and Outreach at the University of Minnesota to test the deer remains at the site and nearby soil samples for presence of CWD prions, as well as the BAH on managing nearby CWD contaminated deer farm and trace-outs to other farms.
Officials will also work with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service on prion-contaminated site remediation, as well as the Leech Lake, Red Lake and White Earth bands of Ojibwe on information exchange and plans for sampling hunter-harvested deer and data collection this fall.
More information and updates on CWD management is available online.