Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By RICHARD JENKINS
Hurley — Iron County is considering implementing a temporary moratorium on importation and raising of cervids in the county, with the Iron County Comprehensive Planning and Zoning Committee deciding Tuesday to schedule a public hearing on the issue.
The temporary ban would allow the county to consider how it wants to handle any potential deer farms that may consider locating in the county.
“Just to remind you, this doesn’t mean no deer farms ever. This is a one-year block on deer farms for us to figure out what we want to do,” Zoning Administrator Erika Roeder said. “It can be increased to two years at the time of expiration, and then we can decide to create an ordinance that says no deer farms, or we can create an ordinance that says ‘by conditional use.’”
She said this would allow the county to impose rules on any farms, such as requiring double fencing or capping the number of animals a farm could raise.
The county’s temporary moratorium would be similar to what Bayfield and Douglas counties have enacted recently, according to committee member Brad Matson, and is designed to prevent chronic wasting disease from entering Iron County’s deer population.
“We’re just trying to get ahead of it,” Matson told the Daily Globe after the meeting, adding he didn’t feel the state was doing enough to stop the spread of CWD.
Weight loss, stumbling, drooling and aggression are all possible symptoms of the fatal brain disease the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said affects deer, elk, reindeer, sika deer and moose.
According to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, there are at least 55 CWD-affected counties in the state, meaning they either have had a deer test positive within their borders or are within 10 miles of a positive deer.
There is no cure for animals infected with the disease and no reported cases of humans being infected with CWD.
Matson, who proposed the county consider the moratorium, said Iron County was one of three Wisconsin counties without an active deer farm. He said he is unaware of any plans to attempt to start a deer farm in the county, but has concerns about the link between captive farming operations and the spread of CWD to wild deer populations.
“The facts are where there’s been CWD on the deer farms, very shortly thereafter there’s CWD in the wild herd,” Matson said during the meeting.
Wisconsin has more CWD-positive deer farms still operating than any other state, the Associated Press reports, with 24 facilities having animals test positive since 2002. The state’s first CWD-positive deer was tested that year, according to the WDNR, after being killed in the November 2001 hunting season.
During Tuesday’s meeting, the committee agreed the temporary ban would be similar to what the county did when addressing concentrated animal feeding operations.
The hearing on the proposed temporary moratorium is planned for the committee’s Jan. 15 meeting.
Editor’s Note: The Associated Press contributed to this story.