Closure of Winona deer park riles some in the community

Nov. 14--The end has arrived for Winona'sLefty Hymes Memorial Deer Park.

Earlier this year, the Winona City Council decided the best option to avoid the spread of chronic wasting disease was to close the city's deer park at Prairie Island.

City manager Steve Sarvi said another reason for the closure was the city's strategic plan for parks.

"There was a recommendation in there to close the park and then repurpose the land for something else," Sarvi said. "That was one factor."

CWD is a highly contagious prion disease. If an animal is infected with the disease, it will ultimately be fatal. There are no ways to treat or vaccinate against the disease. Deer, elk, reindeer, sika deer and moose can be affected by CWD.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention does note on its website that there are concerns this disease could cause harm to nonhuman primates and possibly humans.

With this closure, the deer had to be killed and are set to be tested for CWD.

Sarvi said many organizations, including the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and the Department of Agriculture, seemed to suggest that enclosed animals were in danger of developing CWD.

The city could not release the deer back into the wild, as this would have been against the law, according to Winona director of public works Keith Nelson.

He said the city did not know of anywhere that the deer could be placed, so the only option was to kill the deer.

Nelson said, "We did it quickly and humanely."

The city has seen backlash from community members about the closing of the deer park and how the killing of the deer was conducted.

On Facebook, Scott Nation told his story in a widely shared post about witnessing the shooting of the deer and how the city dealt with the bodies. He expressed anger toward the way that the situation was handled, as he said the employees showed "no care in the world."

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Third Ward council member Pamela Eyden said that she does not believe Nation's story is plausible and that she thought the situation was handled well.

Eyden said that her support of closing the deer park was because "I just thought it was definitely time to remove the deer park and stop confining those deer. I mean, it's a health issue. It's a prevention issue. Once we find chronic wasting disease any place, it's extremely contagious."

First Ward council member Allyn Thurley said that he would have liked to keep the deer park open, but the risk of CWD necessitated closing.

Fourth Ward council member George Borzyskowski also said that the risk to the public was too much of a concern to allow the park to stay open. He had believed the park would close at the end of the year, so the recent closure and killing of the animals was not something he was expecting so quickly.

Michelle Alexander, an at-large council member, said that she also recognized the need to close the park due to the CWD concerns.

"We needed new deer to diversify the DNA of the current stock, but we did not have a location that was cleared of CWD that would allow us to order more domesticated deer," Alexander said. "Second, I really prefer that nature be natural.

"We live in a part of the country that is rich in natural beauty and resources not the least of which is wildlife," she said. I would prefer that the community hike, walk or simply sit and visit in one of our many parks or facilities and view the wildlife in the wild."

"Ultimately I think that in a place like Winona it is very easy for anyone to view animals as they should be -- free and wild," she said.

Alexander said that the decision was not made to simply use the land for something else, as there is other land available in the city.

At-large council member Paul Schollmeier also expressed his support both this year and last year for closing the deer park.

The Winona City Council had discussed the possibility of closing the deer park in the past.

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