Legislative panels hold talk on chronic wasting disease in Arkansas

Fence-height bid met with concern

Lawmakers voiced concern Monday over one of the proposals by Arkansas wildlife officers to curb the spread of a fatal deer and elk disease that threatens a nearly $1 billion state hunting industry.

During a joint meeting of five legislative committees Monday, top officials from the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission laid out a series of proposals they said would help manage the state's sudden and "alarming" growth in chronic wasting disease, including proposals to approve more hunting tags in order to thin deer populations and to require the testing of deer killed in a 10-county area in north-central Arkansas.

But in response to a proposal to require landowners to obtain permits before erecting enclosed fencing 8 feet or higher, lawmakers said they thought such a step could unnecessarily infringe on the owners' rights.

The commission's chief wildlife manager, Brad Carner, said the agency permits commercial groups, such as hunting preserves, to have tall fences that could trap vulnerable deer populations. But there is no mechanism to ensure that private landowners who are not using the land commercially aren't erecting fences around their properties that would interrupt the natural movement of deer populations.

"We have some unknown number of landowners who've put up high fence around their property. It's fine, but doing that, it creates a situation where they have captive deer and we don't know the location," Carner said. "We don't know how many facilities there are. By establishing this permit, we'd like to gain that information and work with those facilities and do some testing there."

Sen. Alan Clark, R-Lonsdale, said he wanted such regulations to be narrowly tailored, fearing such actions would create long-term threats to the rights of Arkansans.

"Unfortunately, these encroachments, though done for the best reasons, generally only go one way," Clark said. "They never go back towards more freedom."

Jeff Crow, a ranking administrator with the commission and its next leader, said the agency is very mindful of the threat posed to landowners' rights and that his group would go back and "reduce" the regulations if there is an opportunity.

But according to Carner, it's unclear when that opportunity would appear.

Since the first recorded case of chronic wasting disease in the state in February, state wildlife officials found that 23 percent of the deer tested in Newton and Boone counties had the disease. The fatal neurological disorder is similar to mad cow disease. It cannot be treated, cured or prevented.

On Monday, Carner said that only a pair of the 24 states that have encountered the disease have been able to beat it back. Carner said that the disease "very well could" reach all parts of the state and that a long-term approach toward slowing its growth is the only foreseeable approach.

"This is a long-term endeavor," Carner said. "Unfortunately, we know from past experience, it's not a disease we'll completely eradicate from the landscape. We have to work to manage it."

The chairman of the Senate's State Agencies and Governmental Affairs Committee, Sen. Eddie Joe Williams, R-Cabot, said the proposal by Game and Fish officials -- if approved by the agency later this week -- would likely meet serious opposition from legislators.

To regulate properties involved in some commercial enterprise involving deer and fencing is one thing, Williams said, but a man has a right to build a fence on his own property.

"I think you're going to see this body push back," Williams said. "You may have some issues with that [proposal] down the road. ... It is personal and private property. You're assuming there's a deer there."

Besides the fencing proposal, Game and Fish officials proposed banning the use of deer-urine-based scents and traps starting in 2017. They also proposed prohibiting the movement of untreated deer parts from a 10-county swath of the state around the five counties where cases of the disease are documented.

Initially, officials had proposed ending baiting to prevent the spread of the disease. After hunters aired concerns about the effect of the move, state officials dialed back that proposal, saying that using feed and bait on private lands in the fall this year will help in the deer harvest.

Williams said he was encouraged by how responsive Game and Fish officials have been over the past few months in their proposals to confront the spread of chronic wasting disease.

He said he'd like to see the same spirit of responsiveness over the tall fence proposal. Otherwise, Williams said, legislators may have to take matters into their own hands.

"I think they'll run into a buzz saw if they just want to dictate that anything above a standard fence, anything 8 feet or over, you'd have to have permits," Williams said. "They can implement it that, but they'll get some pushback from legislators."

Metro on 06/21/2016

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