For years, Michigan banned deer baiting in the Lower Peninsula for a clear reason: it helps stop the spread of disease. Now a new bill, HB 4445, threatens to undo that protection.

Baiting means leaving out piles of food to lure deer into one spot. It might sound harmless, but when deer gather closely around a bait pile, they can pass diseases to each other far more easily than they would in the wild. That's exactly why Michigan tightened its rules after finding bovine tuberculosis in some deer herds, and why it fully banned baiting across the Lower Peninsula starting with the 2019 hunting season, once chronic wasting disease turned up in the region. That disease has now been confirmed in more than a dozen Lower Peninsula counties.

HB 4445 already passed the Michigan House. It's now sitting with the Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Agriculture, and if it becomes law, it would redefine "deer or elk baiting" in a way that opens the door to baiting again during open season.

Bringing deer together around bait doesn't just risk speeding up disease spread among herds already dealing with chronic wasting disease and past tuberculosis outbreaks — it can also draw in other wildlife that has nothing to do with deer season at all.

Michigan spent years building protections against these risks. Senators on the Natural Resources and Agriculture Committee shouldn't roll them back now.

Sign the petition to urge the Michigan Senate Committee on Natural Resources and Agriculture to reject HB 4445 — before disease spreads even further through the state's deer herds.