deer Archives - Missourinet

Sponsors of ag bills expect to overturn vetoes, defend deer language

July 9, 2014 By Mike Lear

Governor Jay Nixon (D) has vetoed two agriculture omnibus bills because they contain language that would transfer regulatory control of captive deer to the Department of Agriculture. The sponsors of those bills say those vetoes will be easy overrides in September.

Representative Casey Guernsey (left) and Senator Brian Munzlinger sponsored agriculture omnibus legislation including captive deer language, in the 2014 session. (photos courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications and the office of Sen. Munzlinger)

Nixon says the bill violates the state’s Constitution, which says the Department of Conservation is responsible for the control and regulation of wildlife.

Senator Brian Munzlinger (R-Williamstown) says the bill is worded so as not to violate the Constitution by specifying that captive deer are not wild.

“Actually if you look at the Constitution, it says, ‘wildlife,'” says Munzlinger. “If you look at the (legislation’s proposed) definition of ‘livestock,’ it says ‘anything not taken from the wild,’ so I think if you look at clear definitions the governor was clearly wrong in his veto of Senate Bill 506.”

Backers of the captive deer provisions in that bill and House Bill 1326 say it would protect hunting preserve operators from new regulations that would put some of them out of business. Proponents of those new regulations say they are needed to prevent the spread of chronic wasting disease (CWD) from imported captive deer into the wild population.

Munzlinger accuses the Governor of standing against private property rights, and the House sponsor of those bills, Representative Casey Guernsey (R-Bethany), agrees.

Guernsey says the new regulations, “literally allow unaccountable, unelected officials a power grab to confiscate and regulate private property and farmers specifically, unlike we’ve ever seen before in the State of Missouri.”

Nixon, in his veto messages on the bills, calls it, “unfortunate,” that the legislature amended the deer language to, “two pieces of legislation that otherwise contain worthy provisions advancing Missouri agriculture.”

Munzlinger says the deer language “fit right in” with the bills.

“I think it was a good part, too,” says Munzlinger. “It was another sector of our agriculture industry – a private property rights issue that is related to agriculture because they are livestock. They are owned by those individuals, taken care of by those individuals.”

Munzlinger adds, “I cannot believe this governor came out against private property rights. That’s exactly what it is. We made a clear distinction that these were captive cervids that were property of the owners, and yet he didn’t clarify between ‘captive’ and ‘wild’ in his comments.”

Both lawmakers believe the vetoes will be overridden in September’s veto session.

Guernsey tells Missourinet, “We’ve passed and overridden the governor’s veto on agriculture legislation before. This isn’t the first time the governor’s vetoed agriculture’s priorities. I’m confident that if you look at the votes on all ten of these individual proposals, they passed out of the House and the Senate with pretty significant margins in a bipartisan fashion, so we’re going to do everything we can to override the veto.”

Read the Governor’s veto messages for SB 506 and HB 1326 (both are .pdf files)

Gov. Nixon to act on bills including captive deer language

July 7, 2014 By Mike Lear

The office Governor Jay Nixon (D) says he will discuss Tuesday morning in Columbia his actions regarding legislation that would change the definition of livestock to include captive deer.

Senate Bill 506 and House Bill 1326 would make the Missouri Department of Agriculture responsible for the captive deer industry. Currently the agriculture and conservation departments oversee facilities. Captive deer industry representatives say rules proposed by conservation officials would force operators out of business.

Nixon will discuss what he will do with those bills at a meeting of the Conservation Commission at 10:30 at the Tiger Hotel in downtown Columbia.

Lawmakers hear conflicting testimony on deer disease in Missouri (AUDIO)

July 16, 2013 By Mike Lear

The House Interim Committee on Cause and Spread of Chronic Wasting Disease in the Elk and White Tail Deer Population has heard two very different sets of information from those who do, and don’t, think captive breeders are to blame for the disease coming to Missouri.

A full hearing room listens to testimony from Doctor James Kroll of Stephen F. Austin University about chronic wasting disease management. (Photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

The disease affects deer and other cervids. The first positive tests for the disease from deer in Missouri were found in 2010 in captive deer on private hunting preserves in Macon and Linn Counties in north-central Missouri. Since then, 21 total cases of the disease have been confirmed in the state, all in deer either on those preserves or within a ten-county containment zone near them.

Outdoor Guide Magazine conservation editor Steve Jones says that mirrors instances of CWD’s spread into other parts of the country.

“Tracking the spread of the disease on the North American map reveals clear association with the confined cervid industry. The massive geographic leaps such as the one that brought CWD to Missouri are clearly the result of the commercial movement of live cervids. Can it be proven? No. Is it obvious? Yes.”

Kevin Grace of White Tail Sales & Auction in Eldon argues that among about 8,000 captive breeders in the U.S. there have been only 54 positive tests for the disease since 2002.

“Since the infancy stages of this disease, there has never been a trace back or a trace forward, never, to cross the state line … in all this time, only one time has an infected deer been moved from one farm to another.”

After the Conservation Department made a presentation, Doctor James Kroll with Stephen F. Austin University in Texas was allowed to testify at length before several others were limited to two-minute blocks of testimony due to lack of time. He tells lawmakers he thinks chronic wasting disease is not as new to the state as Missourians have been told.

“It’s always been out there. Is CWD spreading or is testing spreading? The more we test, the more likely we are to find it.”

The committee’s chairwoman, Representative Sandy Crawford (R-Buffalo), says the main question it will consider is whether captive breeders should be subject to tighter regulations. She says changes considered last year by the Conservation Department would have “basically put some of our deer breeders, if not all of them, out of business eventually.”

On Monday, Jones told her committee it must consider such regulations or face backlash from the state’s hunting population.

“If the legislative response to this horrible disease places the needs of a small industry above the clear and urgent public interest, do not count on the continued silence of those 500,000 Missourians.”

The two sides also disagree over how great a threat, if any, the disease poses to the state’s deer herd.

Donald Hill, a deer breeder in central Missouri, insists that threat is being overblown by the Conservation Department for political gain.

“Conservation … we are their competition and they want us out of this picture. It doesn’t have anything to do with CWD … I can take everything they print in their magazine and I can dispute it with scientific evidence.”

Kroll suggests that the Conservation Department’s efforts to cull the local herd around where the cases of CWD have been found could actually hinder the natural evolution of a resistance to the disease.

“In order for an animal to adapt to any disease … you’ve got to have two things. You’ve got to have a large population and you have to have high genetic variability. Whitetail deer have both of them, and I fully anticipate genetic response, if it’s even necessary, to that disease.”

Crawford says the committee is also considering whether the legislature should change how the management of deer is conducted. Breeders want to be put under the control of the Department of Agriculture.

Their critics, like Richard Ash, Conservation Federation President, say they should remain under the control of the Conservation Department.

“We believe that there should be one entity that is looking at the regulatory actions. You can’t have multiple bosses … we believe that MDC should be responsible for all wildlife whether its native or non-native, captive or free-roaming.”

Others, such as Doug Smentkowski with the Mule Deer Foundation, urged compromise.

“Both sides need to seek common ground. There are items that both sides can move on and an agreement does need to be reached because if we don’t reach an agreement, they’re just going to keep fighting.”

The committee will meet three more times, once a month through October in Buffalo, Jefferson City and Poplar Bluff.

AUDIO: Testimony of Doctor James Kroll, Stephen F. Austin University 35:51

AUDIO: Testimony of Outdoor Guide Magazine conservation editor Steve Jones, 4:23

First batch of results in from chronic wasting disease sampling

December 24, 2012 By Mike Lear

The Missouri Department of Conservation has some results back from its screening for chronic wasting disease in Missouri deer.

The Conservation Department has received results on about 800 of roughly 1,700 samples taken in six north-central Missouri counties, tested for chronic wasting disease. (Photo courtesy, David Stonner, Missouri Department of Conservation.)

The Department collected around 1,700 tissue samples from deer killed in by hunters in six counties in northern Missouri near where 5 cases of chronic wasting disease were found in free-ranging deer earlier this year.

Department spokesman Joe Jerek says results are back from testing about 800 of those samples.

“So far only one adult buck has tested positive for the disease, and that buck was harvested in the same area of northwest Macon County where CWD was previously found.”

That brings to 6 the total of free-ranging deer found in Missouri to be infected with the disease. Jerek says, that all 6 have come from the same geographic area could be significant, but he says it is too early to draw conclusions.

“We have more than half the test results out there, so once we have all of the test results in the Department of Conservation will take a look at what they show and then we’ll be able to share more comprehensive information with the overall test results.”

Jerek says the final results should be back by the end of February.

The hunter who took the infected deer found in this first batch of results has been notified. Jerek says anyone who hunted in Adair, Chariton, Linn, Macon, Randolph and Sullivan Counties and participated in the sampling effort can see the results for the deer they harvested by going to mdc.mo.gov/node/19829 and entering his or her conservation number. Results will take up to 6 weeks from when a deer was harvested to be available.

The disease is not considered a threat to human health, but Jerek says some people just like to know.

“Folks will just kind of want some affirmation that their test results came back, hopefully negative, which the overwhelming majority have so far.”

Jerek says even though the disease has not been shown to threaten human health, it is considered a serious threat to the state’s more than $1 billion a year deer hunting industry.

“Deer hunting in Missouri is a rich tradition, it’s a great way, an important way for a lot of people to put food on their table, and it’s a big economic driver.”

Hunters who take deer in those six counties can still participate in the sampling effort through the end of the archery season, January 15. They must take a harvested deer to a participating taxidermist in the region, or contact a local Department office.

Conservation Department turns to hunters to slow chronic wasting disease

May 31, 2012 By Mike Lear

The Conservation Department is spreading the word this summer of what it wants the state’s hunters to do to slow the spread of chronic wasting disease in Missouri’s deer herd.

Conservation Department officials collect samples from deer to test for chronic wasting disease. (photo courtesy, Missouri Department of Conservation)

CWD is a fatal, degenerative neurological disease effecting the nervous system of cervids like deer, elk and moose.

Deer Biologist Jason Sumners says it poses a serious threat. “Long term outlook for the deer population, particularly locally, isn’t good … Chronic wasting disease is a disease that will slowly accumulate over time and it is likely to have population level impacts, particularly locally.”

16 deer have tested positive for CWD in the state. 5 of those have been free-ranging deer and the rest captive, all in or within a few miles of a hunting preserve in northwest Macon County.

The Conservation Commission last week enacted some new regulations as part of the effort to slow the spread. One is a regulation prohibiting feeding deer or the placement of grain, salt and minerals in Adair, Chariton, Linn, Macon, Randolph and Sullivan Counties; what the Department is calling a “CWD Containment Zone” around the preserve where those 16 positive results have come from.

Sumners explains the idea behind restricting the feeding of deer. “The disease is transmitted from animal-to-animal, likely through social grooming, through nose-to-nose contact; those kinds of interactions.” Sumners says feeding deer draws them into groups where such interactions occur.

Another step is discouraging the moving of whole carcasses or certain parts out of that containment zone.

“The brain, the spinal cords contain the highest concentrations of infectious material and so that presents some opportunity to introduce the disease.” Sumners encourages hunters to “double bag that waste and send it to the landfill or dispose of it in your municipal trash that ends up in the landfill, or bury the carcasses.”

Sumners says once CWD-infectious material is exposed to an area, the threat of infection lasts a long time. “It appears that it’s at a minimum a number of years, and maybe much longer than a few years. There’s work being done to try to figure out how long the prions can persist in the environment … what kind of things may play a role in breaking down the prions, but these are very resilient.”

The Commission also removed the antler point restriction within the containment zone through September 15. Sumners explains, “The disease will spread across the landscape through the natural movement of animals and yearling males are protected by the antler point restriction and those are the ones that disperse and move long distances, and so we’ve removed the regulatory aspect that prevented the harvest of that segment of the population.”

The Department will host an informational meeting Saturday from 1:00 until 4:00 p.m. at New Cambria High School on CWD.

Find out more about the Commission’s latest actions and the Department’s efforts to fight CWD at its website.