By CELESTE BAUMGARTNER
Ohio Correspondent

COLUMBUS, Ohio — State Senate Bill 225 and House Bill 410 have recently stirred up a little dust over the transfer of regulatory authority concerning captive whitetail and other deer, from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources Division of Wildlife (DOW) to the Department of Agriculture (ODA).

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is a concern. It has been detected and has negatively impacted the deer herds in five nearby states and eight other states throughout the country. There are documented cases of CWD-infected captive deer that raise fears it could be transmitted to wild deer. CWD has not been detected in Ohio, according to Vicki Mountz, executive administrator with the DOW.

“Ohio is nationally recognized for its successful deer management program,” Mountz said. “The division has 137 wildlife officers across the state who inspect propagation and hunting preserve facilities.”
When the bills were introduced, many sportsmen complained they did not want the authority taken from DOW. It and the ODA had already been working on Ohio Administrative Code rules that would deal with CWD, Mountz said.

“We were just about to put in a new series of rules on that which would specify a lot more to do with the CWD monitoring, and just didn’t get it done before this bill came in,” she said. “Maybe we’ve moved a little slowly in getting rules in, and I agree that we probably did. I think this has brought about the realization that we need to work together a little better.”

“We knew that the deer farmers would prefer to be under ODA as opposed to the Department of Natural Resources (ODNR),” said James Marshall, assistant chief of the DOW. “We were opposed to that and to this legislation because of our concerns with Ohio’s deer herd.

“Our primary concern is this: We’ve had this authority over deer hunting preserves and propagators for over 50 years. It is critical to our mission that we have authority over deer propagators, because they have the capacity to impact our deer herd by bringing in deer from other states.”

ODA Director Robert Boggs said he does not have a problem with that. He was not convinced the switch needed to take place and ODA did not ask for legislation to do that, he said.
“We work very closely with ODNR on the captive deer herd and the hunting preserves because our interest is animal disease,” Boggs said. “We don’t have the chronic wasting problems in Ohio, but we’re surrounded by states that do. We very much want to do everything possible to keep that disease out of our state because it does spread to livestock.”

Hunting contributes $859 million to Ohio’s economy each year. A diseased wild deer herd would drastically reduce this.
Meanwhile, Ohio deer farming brings $59.2 million into the state each year. Ohio is third in the nation in the number of deer and elk farms; in 2009 there were 695 deer farms.

“Maybe that $59.2 million isn’t a lot to some people, but when you’re a farmer struggling to keep your family farm, that is a lot,” said Carolyn Laughlin, who is on the Whitetail Deer Farmers of Ohio, Inc. board of directors. That group worked to help bring about SB225 and HB410.

“What deer farming has done for a lot of our members in Ohio, is it has enabled people to keep their farmland together,” she added.
Under current rules, deer farmers can choose if they want to be in the CWD monitoring program – with the new legislation, it would be a requirement. Currently they cannot ship deer across state lines if they are not in the program.

“If you are in that monitoring program, then anytime an animal (over the age of 12 months) dies on your farm you have to take its head to an accredited veterinarian – it can’t be just any veterinarian,” Laughlin said. “They remove part of the brain stem and they send it to the ODA, and they test it for CWD.”

Laughlin’s farm gets its license from the DOW but, because the farm is in the CWD monitoring program, the ODA has a list of her animals and furnishes USDA ear tags. Through ODA’s system, a diseased animal could be traced back to its origin.

“If CWD comes to a deer farm, that deer farm is devastated,” Laughlin said. “We can never sell another cervid again. They come and destroy our entire herd, so every penny that we have invested in our herd, in our genetics, in our facilities, everything is gone.
“Our goal here is to protect our animals and to protect our investment, our farm.”

For more information on the Whitetail Deer Farmers of Ohio, visit www.thewdfo.com