LANSING, Mich. — The state’s Natural Resources Commission announced an updated Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) plan at its meeting last month. The report, which was revised in July, is an update of the state’s 2002 plan to deal with CWD.

CWD is not currently endemic in Michigan. It’s an infectious prion disease transmitted between animals by urine, feces, infectious saliva and respiratory aerosols. It’s not thought that people can get catch it. CWD is a disease of the central nervous system and is similar to bovine spongiform encephalopathy in cattle and scrapie in sheep.

Cervids, especially whitetail deer, can contract CWD, but so far only one deer in Michigan is known to have gotten it – that was a whitetail found in a privately owned facility in August 2008. According to the report, the 2002 CWD plan is still scientifically valid in most respects, but state officials say much has been learned in the past 10 years about what’s acceptable to people.

“There’s been a lot that we’ve learned since 2002,” said Steve Schmitt, a spokesman for the state’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR). “To do anything, you need public support.

“In a state where you have a long tradition of feeding and baiting, it’s hard to get rid of feeding and baiting. In Wisconsin, they tried to push some things that people didn’t like, even though what the DNR was doing there was trying to manage the disease. Being realistic, you have to take into account what you’re going to be able to accomplish. This plan is much better at doing that. It’s a more adaptive-type plan.”

After the CWD-positive Michigan deer was found, state officials banned baiting and feeding in the entire Lower Peninsula, but that met with a great deal of opposition that never went away. After about two years, officials dropped the ban.

Now they have the new plan, which focuses emergency measures in smaller areas when and if a cervid is found to have CWD – and officials believe it’s only a matter of time before more CWD-positive cervids are found.

CWD is endemic in neighboring Wisconsin. Schmitt said officials tried to eradicate the disease there and it didn’t work. He said such efforts haven’t worked in the 16 other states where it is also endemic, including Illinois. Hunters in Wisconsin didn’t like programs such as “earn a buck” for harvesting deer, and other measures caused hunters to become “embittered.”

The new plan in Michigan tries to be more sensitive to what people feel comfortable with; for example, if a CWD-positive deer is found, emergency measures such as a ban on baiting and feeding will be implemented in a 10-mile radius only, unless officials find the deer within that radius are moving outside the boundary.

The emergency plan will be implemented if a CWD-positive deer is found within 10 miles of the Michigan border; under the old rules it was 50 miles. This is especially relevant, as a CWD-positive deer was found for the first time last April in northern Wisconsin. The state shares a border with Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

“The new plan, I think it’s a good one: biologically, economically, socially and politically,” Schmitt said.

The updated plan can be viewed online at www.michigan.gov/cwd