The Department of Natural Resources’ efforts to combat chronic wasting disease — an illness that threatens Wisconsin’s entire deer herd — have had little effect after seven years and nearly $41 million in state and federal spending, data and interviews indicate.

The DNR has failed to meet critical goals for reducing the size of the deer herd and reducing infection totals in areas hit by the fatal disease, Davin Lopez, who heads the agency’s CWD program, acknowledged in a recent interview.

For instance, in one southwestern Wisconsin deer management unit being monitored for CWD, the population goal is about 1,800 deer. Estimates from earlier this year put the herd at around 11,500 in that unit.

The two times the DNR appeared to be making progress with the population within the CWD Management Zone, it was only after goals were relaxed and made easier to attain. The population goal in 2008 was more than three times the goal in 2002, when the DNR first started specifically monitoring for the disease.

At the same time, the rate of infection in adult bucks in the core western area of the CWD management zone, which covers mostly western Dane and eastern Iowa counties, increased from 10 percent in 2007 to 15.5 percent in 2008.

Marcell Wieloch, chairman of the Marathon County Conservation Congress, admitted the DNR has struggled to get a handle on CWD and doesn’t see an answer on the horizon.

“(CWD) is kind of like cancer,” Wieloch said. “There are some good ideas and thoughts out there, but no one has quite figured it out, yet.”

CWD is a contagious, fatal neurological disease that affects deer, elk and moose and is similar to mad cow disease in cattle. There have been no cases of the disease infecting humans or other animal species to date, but inter-species transmission remains a concern, especially for those eating infected meat.