First Case of Chronic Wasting Disease in a Wild Deer Found in Wisconsin's Marinette County
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) announced on October 22 that chronic wasting disease (CWD) was found in a wild deer near Peshtigo in Marinette County, the first positive test in the county's wild deer herd. The deer, a 3-year-old adult buck, was humanely killed after showing signs of illness. A wild deer also tested positive earlier this year in neighboring Oconto County, where two positives were recorded in 2025 and one in 2024. The detection will extend Marinette County's current baiting and feeding ban by three additional years, with further extensions if more cases appear; bans in adjacent counties are unaffected.
CWD is a fatal neurological disease of deer, elk and moose caused by an infectious prion that affects the brain. It spreads mainly through close animal contact, and prions can persist in soil, plants and water. The disease has not been found to infect humans or livestock such as cattle and pigs, though health officials recommend not eating meat from a CWD-positive animal. Since it was identified in the 1960s at a Colorado research facility, CWD has spread to 37 states, five Canadian provinces, and Finland, Norway, South Korea and Sweden, according to a June 2026 U.S. Geological Survey report. Wisconsin first detected the disease in wild and farmed deer in 2002. In the 2025 sampling year, 2,040 of 18,368 wild deer tested statewide were positive, about 11 percent, a record high since monitoring began.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 白尾鹿。照片：Quist，CC BY-SA 4.0，来源：Wikimedia Commons（File: White-tailed Deer Doe.jpg）
