MNR drops plan to end CWD testing after another deer tests positive near Brainerd

Testing for deer disease in the Brainerd Lakes region will continue for several more hunting seasons as one white-tailed deer recently tested positive for chronic wasting disease (CWD).

The lab report, which arrived towards the end of this season, overturned the Natural Resources Department’s plan to abandon CWD testing and other special management tactics for the region.

The DNR said on Monday that the disease had appeared in just one of 1,234 deer captured by hunters tested in the Brainerd area this season. CWD-positive adult male deer were collected near Nisswa. The positive result ended a three-year streak when a mixture of compulsory and voluntary tissue sampling found no sign of the plague biologists compare to mad cow disease.

“Like us, area residents and hunters were optimistic about the return to normal deer management,” said Michelle Carstensen, MNR’s Wildlife Health Program Supervisor. “It’s unfortunate, but this discovery resets the clock, and the MDC management measures will remain in place at least until the fall of 2024.”

The affected region, known as Deer Permit Area 604, stretches north from Brainerd to Pine River and east to Aitkin. MNR initially brought in local hunters to help test for the disease after CWD was discovered in 2016 at a deer farm near Merrifield that sold fenced genetically modified trophy hunts. In 2019, the disease appeared in a wild doe found dead near the state-regulated deer farm.

With nearly 15,000 wild deer in the region tested since 2017 and only two positives found, the DNR said it was convinced CWD was not widespread or widespread in the region’s wild deer population. But continued testing as well as other efforts to help reduce the risk of CWD spreading – such as continued herd thinning, restrictions on carcass movement, and a ban on deer feeding – will continue to minimize the risk of establishing CWD.

Minnesota’s first CWD management area was established by the DNR in southeastern Minnesota, where the disease has become established but at a low density. Other areas managed by the MNR are the Southern Metropolitan Region (primarily Dakota County), the Central Eastern Region, the Central Western Region, the Climax Region, Minnesota, and the Northwest.