Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is an always fatal, degenerative disease that affects members of the deer family. It is related to Bovine TSE (Mad Cow Disease) and CJD in humans. CWD was discovered and described in Colorado in the 1960s but with its recent discovery on widely dispersed captive cervid farms and in wild whitetailed deer in Wisconsin, it has become a major national conservation issue.

Three cases of CWD were documented in south western Wisconsin during the 2001 November deer-hunting season as a result of routine, random, disease surveillance by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR). The discovery triggered a massive surveillance program to determine the extent and distribution of the disease in Wisconsin, a management program to control the disease, and intense public reaction.