- Time now for another community spotlight.

I am Tracci Dial from NWPB, joined today by Staci Lehman from the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, a communications manager based in Spokane.

Staci, how are you today?

- I'm doing good.

Thanks for having me.

- Staci, thank you so much for coming on.

I know the Department of Fish and Wildlife recently put out a PSA trying to get the word out.

There was a change this spring having to do with feeding wild animals.

Can you tell us about that?

- Yeah, absolutely.

So because of where we live, many of us enjoy the wildlife that are around us.

I mean, even just being in Spokane, our neighborhoods even have a lot of wildlife.

You can sometimes look out your window and see deer and moose, which is really cool.

However, feeding them is causing some problems.

And we had confirmed... We detected chronic wasting disease in the state, in 2024.

It's been almost a year now.

And the change we did implement a feeding ban statewide on deer, elk and moose.

And that is to help prevent the spread of chronic wasting disease.

- So how exactly does that attribute to spreading the disease?

- Yeah, that's a great question.

So just like you and I can spread diseases to each other or common cold, the flu or whatever, just by being close to each other.

You sneeze, I inhale anything like that.

With animals, chronic wasting disease is spread between deer, elk and moose, through...

It can come through the environment.

So, like, dirt that has prions in it that cause CWD.

It can be caused by touching feces or urine.

So kind of the same ways that you and I would pass the disease among ourselves.

So when there is artificial feeding, it draws animals together.

A bunch of them come in contact and then they will eat, disperse, move to the next site, meet more animals, disperse, you know, and keep passing it along.

So we do ask people not to feed, because there's less chance at animals are going to congregate if there is not an artificial food source.

- All right, that makes sense.

So how is the department keeping an eye on this?

And what sort of repercussions would there be should people be feeding these animals?

- Yeah, this first year we're really concentrating on education.

We know that people really love to see the wildlife, and we love that we do too.

That's why we work where we do.

So we're not going to knock on people's doors and write them a ticket or anything like that.

We will, you know, try to educate people on why this is bad.

If you really care about the animals, the best thing you can do to help them is not feed them.

So we want to get that point across to people.

- All right.

And how can other folks help spread the word for you guys?

- Yeah.

So we know a lot of people that we get a lot of calls saying, hey, my neighbor is feeding, you know, feeding deer, turkeys or whatever.

And turkeys not illegal to feed squirrels, not illegal to feed.

But if it draws in deer, elk, anything else then it is now banned.

So we ask people to just let your neighbors know.

What we're finding is the word is, you know, starting to spread but it's taking some time.

So a lot of people aren't familiar yet with this new rule.

So, best way they could help us is just to notify their neighbors and educate them.

- All right, and the Department of Fish and Wildlife does have a lot of information on this.

How can people find out more of that information?

- Yeah, we have a lot of chronic wasting disease information on our website.

People can go to WDFW.WA.Gov/CWD.

There's also information on feeding wildlife in general.

You can just Google it at any time.

Because in addition to it spreading disease, wildlife feeding causes a lot of other problems as well.

It draws animals together where they can be habituated by humans.

It draws them together where they can become victims of predators, or be hit by cars.

So there's a lot of repercussions for the animals.

While people think that they're doing that they're really helping and doing something good.

It is more harmful for the most part.

So we just encourage people to go to our website and read up on the topic.

- And Staci, thank you so much for this information and spreading the word.

So, don't feed the ducks, don't feed the deer, don't feed the elk, don't feed the moose.

- And don't feed the turkeys.

- Don't feed the turkeys.

Okay.

Well, Staci, thank you so much.

We appreciate your time.

- Thank you so much.