In an uphill battle to slow the spread of wildlife diseases, the state Game Commission is asking Pennsylvanians to voluntarily buck a nationwide trend in wildlife feeding.
The request was prompted by agency biologists who are battling the spread of a fatal deer malady — chronic wasting disease. They recently recommended to commissioners that a statewide ban on feeding white-tailed deer would help slow the spread of wildlife diseases.
A ban is not likely to happen soon.
A 2016 report by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service found that home wildlife watching is a growing pastime practiced by some 81 million Americans. More than 1 million Pennsylvanians are believed to enjoy watching deer, birds and other critters outside the window, and routine feeding keeps the animals coming back for more.
If the Game Commission recommendation evolves into an official proposal presented to the state Legislature, it would go to the separate Senate and House Game and Fisheries Committees. Supporting legislators would have to explain to voters why they can’t fill their feeders.
“There is a committee made up mostly of Game Commission staff that has recommended expanding the existing feeding ban for bears and elk to include deer and turkeys,” said Travis Lau, a Game Commission spokesman. “In response, the agency is conducting open houses and otherwise collecting public comment to gauge opinions on the issue. Without the public’s support and compliance, a ban won’t work.”
The Fish and Wildlife Service supports the Game Commission biologists, suggesting they got the science right. Although animals exchange bodily fluids in natural settings, artificial feeding stations such as bird feeders and shucked corn piles create additional opportunity for the spread of disease-laden microorganisms.
The Game Commission routinely addresses wildlife outbreaks of mange, insect-borne infections, West Nile virus and other flare-ups, but its top concern is chronic wasting disease. The neurological disorder, similar to bovine “mad cow disease,” is communicable to deer, elk and moose. There is no known cure. The disease is always fatal and exposure cannot be detected until shortly before the infected deer’s painful death.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports no conclusive evidence that CWD can be spread to humans. But this form of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy is wreaking havoc among deer herds in 23 states, including Pennsylvania, where pockets of infection in south-central counties continue to spread. Deer feeding and the use of urine-based scents by hunters are among the practices banned in three Disease Control Areas, established by the Game Commission to slow the spread of CWD.
But the environmental threat has not been acknowledged by the general public, and opposition to a deer feeding ban is pervasive.
“Most of our customers are a lot of elderly people who really just want to feed deer in their backyards so they can watch them,” said Robert Jones, manager of the Mount Nebo Agway feed store in Ohio Township, Allegheny County. “From a business standpoint, that would really cut our products. We sell a lot of deer feed.”
Statewide, municipalities with deer-control issues that have proposed feeding bans have faced stiff opposition and eventually dropped the idea. But Patrick Snickles, a southwest district Game Commission spokesman, said it’s always a bad idea to feed deer for multiple reasons. Most people, he said, don’t know about lactic acidosis, a fatal disease caused when deer eat corn in winter when the bacteria needed to digest corn does not exist in their stomachs.
“In general, feeding deer is bad because it habituates them, makes them lose their fear of humans,” he said. “The bigger problem is, just like any disease, the closer contact these animals have with one another, the higher the rate of disease exchange. That’s certainly true with CWD.”
