Not everything is political these days, according to Missouri Department of Conservation Director Jason Sumners, but he acknowledges he knows the management of chronic wasting disease is personal for many of the state’s hunters and landowners.
Sumners used his own history of hunting in Missouri as the framework of a recent open letter announcing that the Missouri Conservation Department will suspend this year’s targeted deer removal program.
“The hunting heritage is a real important part of what many of us are as people in Missourians,” he said. “So really, this pause was an opportunity to take a step back and say, OK, what might we need to do better to work together to come to some of these more reasonable and sustainable approaches?”
It’s a decision that some hunters and landowners who’ve pushed back on certain programs to prevent CWD, including the targeted offseason removal as well as restrictions on traditional hunting tactics, say is the right move.
Sumners said that this offseason, the department will reevaluate its other efforts to reduce the prevalence of chronic wasting disease, which have often put members of the state’s hunting community at odds.
“We're wanting to work with local landowners, with the hunting public, to understand where they are: What do they want from the deer population? What do we desire as Missourians, for our deer herd to look like, and how best do we go about managing that resource together?”
He said the pause also comes while participation in CWD mitigation efforts by the public is decreasing. Hunters in Missouri were asked to have their game checked for the disease with the Department of Conservation at the onset of this past season.
“To me, it was the right decision to say, let's spend our time building relationships, working with landowners together to come to some shared goals and outcomes,” he said.
CWD is not known to spread to humans, though the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advises against eating meat from infected animals. Sumners rejects the characterization of CWD by some skeptics as a “political” disease, in which the threat is weaponized in order to justify government intervention or to bolster the Conservation Department’s power–pointing to the scientific evidence that the disease is easily spread and deadly to infected deer.
Critics of the targeted removal specifically have said that game is going to waste, but the department donates venison without CWD infection detected to food pantries. The program has also received pushback from those who say killing deer to prevent the spread of a disease is more detrimental to the population than the disease itself.
“We're detecting it in places relatively quickly after it's been introduced, likely, and so it's still at relatively low prevalence, which is the real point in time at which we can do something meaningful,” explained Sumners.
In the other camp are those concerned about the spread of CWD throughout Missouri since it was first found in the state in 2010. Although the disease has continued to spread geographically, numbers of overall infections remain low, which Sumners said is a sign that prevention techniques have been working. He insists the pause in the targeted removal this winter cannot be seen as an abandonment of the disease management efforts.
“I think we are doing our level best to work very closely and understand the needs and desires of landowners in the hunting community, while also bringing you know the facts associated with what we do know about chronic wasting disease and the spread and the potential impacts it has on what is a super important resource in the state of Missouri,” he said. “I genuinely hope that we are able to work together and find some common solutions.”
Still, some argue that management isn’t necessary – a perspective Sumners said he can understand.
“I just don't know what running its course looks like that isn't just a really bad outcome for white-tailed deer.”
The Department of Conservation invites feedback on its CWD mitigation efforts on its website.
