And Now You Want to Kill MORE Innocents?
An Animal Rights Article from All-Creatures.org

FROM

Unnamed Activist
February 2010

"Lethal urban deer management is barbaric and it doesn't work! Stop killing our deer!"

This image is pleasing to the eyes of decent human beings with the capacity to empathize

This image is eye candy for serial killing sociopaths

An open letter to the Death Park deer slaughterers by Unnamed Activist

Emailed on 2/13/10

Hello to my friends at JCPRD [Johnson County Park & Recreation District, Johnson County, Kansas] and KDWP [Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks],

Sorry to have neglected you for so long, but I’ve been pre-occupied with other animal rights issues and some personal matters.

I don’t believe I had gotten around to sending you the social statement that I included in my request to dismiss my appeal of the TRO (injunction) that I filed to stop your sadistic bow hunt of the Death Park deer, so here is a segment and a link to my condemnation of your malevolence in its entirety:

The Defendants have literally gotten away with murder…

6. The Plaintiffs have reconciled himself to the fact that the Defendants have literally gotten away with murder, despite the immense social strife and stiff opposition they catalyzed with their gross abuse of power, extreme negligence that enabled the deer to over-populate to such an extent, unnecessary and gratuitous annihilation of sentient individuals who were under their stewardship, decimation of the aesthetic value and reputation of Shawnee Mission Park, breaking of Kansas state law by trading in wildlife (bartering deer bodies and “meat” for the services of the bow hunters), conducting an egregiously inaccurate and biased deer census to enable more killing after decimating the herd, breaking their own rules by allowing hunting and the use of broad-head arrows in Shawnee Mission Park, violating the Equal Protection Clause of the US Constitution by allowing a select few members of the community to break the law, and violating the Plaintiff’s Constitutional rights on myriad occasions via police and FBI harassment, surveillance, intimidation, and false arrest

And despite recognizing the depth of your duplicity, corruption, and incestuous ties to the hunting (aka nonhuman animal murdering) community and industries (it’s “comforting” to know that hunters, who comprise about 2.1% of the population in KS, and Cabela’s and Bass Pro Shop are dictating public policy in our so-called Constitutional republic), I was astounded last night when I read Jim Sullinger’s 2/10/10 article in the Kansas City Star in which you have essentially stated that non-lethal deer management will not be an option in Death Park (fka Shawnee Mission Park) in 2010.
Yours and your cronies’ desperation to keep the dying “sport” of hunting alive is palpable, Lloyd Fox and Mike Hayden. You may be in the driver’s seat for now, but the hunting bus is headed for a major crash from which it will NEVER recover…. See: The Outfitters’ Lament: Too Few Kids with Guns.

Below are the lies, distortions, and false propaganda that some of you at JCPRD and KDWP recently threw out to Sullinger. My comments, evidence-supported counter-arguments, observations, and exposures of your lies (with links to credible references, statistics, and documentation) appear in brackets, bold font, and italics underneath the text from Jim’s article:

Officials say non-lethal options unlikely for Shawnee Mission Park’s deer

The deer control program at Shawnee Mission Park ended Jan. 31 with 342 deer killed by sharpshooters and bow hunters.

Officials estimated that the number was still short of their goal of reducing the herd to 50 deer per square mile. At the end of the sharpshooter phase in November, wildlife experts estimated the deer population in the 3.5-square-mile greater park area at 72 deer per square mile. Only 29 deer were killed by bow hunters in that phase.

[Your failure to reach your goal is not the least bit surprising. It is obvious that you didn't intend to "succeed" in reducing the number of deer to the "appropriate" level. The true agenda was, and still is, to perpetuate bow hunting in Shawnee Mission Park. That's why you empathy deficients are still trying to get the Kansas legislature to pass Anthony Brown's despicable HOUSE BILL No. 2342, which, in part, reads," Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, the board of county commissioners of Johnson County shall provide for a season for archery for deer and is hereby directed to issue archery deer permits for hunting deer within the boundaries of Shawnee Mission park in accordance with state statutes and rules and regulations of the secretary of wildlife and parks, adopted in accordance with K.S.A. 32-805, and amendments thereto, concerning archery deer hunting."

Since this abomination isn’t law yet, Mike Hayden, Lloyd Fox and your blood-lusting supporters and sycophants have found a means to bring bow-hunting into Death Park under the guise of an annual "deer management plan." How clever of you…]

AND

[As I stated in the 12/14/09 JOCO District Court hearing concerning the TRO (or injunction) that I filed in an attempt to stop your bow and arrow slaughter:

"But speaking for myself, I have very serious concerns about the census they conducted after the initial harvest, as they call it, the accuracy of it.

As Mr. Meadors just said, a flyover is much more accurate, particularly during the winter when there is not much foliage. They conducted this doing spotlight surveys. I’ve got some documentation here from the Texas Department of Wildlife website that says spotlight surveys should conducted from July 15th through the end of August. They conducted this census somewhere towards the middle or end of November of this year.

The accuracy range that they gave for previous surveys that they conducted — excuse me a minute while I find my documentation. Okay, here. This is an E-mail from Grant Evans who is an employee of the parks and recreation department, and it’s my understanding, is a bow hunter, to Lloyd Fox, who is with Kansas Department of Wildlife who is also pro hunting, so you can draw your own conclusions. I mean, that’s subjective. But it seems to me that there is room there for this to be perhaps slanted in favor of having the hunt. But anyway this was from — this is an E-mail dated November 10th of 2008 referencing previous censuses done on the deer in Shawnee Mission Park, results from 2007-2008, are basically the same for both years. In 2007 the density estimate was 208 deer per square mile with a 95 percent confidence interval between 161 to 269 deer per square mile. In 2008 they said the count was 195 deer, the range of accuracy anywhere from 164 to 232 deer. And they are saying that they cannot make a distinction between the populations, that those populations could be equal, even though they came up with a figure of 208 for one year and 195 for the other year, which indicates to me they cannot state with a high degree of accuracy how many deer they have in that park.

I do not believe that there are still 73 deer per square mile. Anecdotally speaking which I realize doesn’t hold a great deal of weight evidence-wise, but many people who go to the park to observe the deer, myself included, would go to the park and drive the road that essentially it covers the circumference of the park and interior, and before the initial harvest would count anywhere from 50 to 100 deer and now we’re lucky if we see 6 to 10. I do not believe that there is still an overpopulation problem of deer in this park. I believe that this is a — this bow hunt is being driven by people who simply have a hidden agenda to introduce bow hunting into this park on an annual basis, and that there is no reason to conduct this hunt. They are using terminology — they want to play semantics. They don’t want to call it “hunt.” They want to call it a harvest or a deer reduction. Call it what you will, but it’s unnecessary at this point."]

The end of the cull prompted Johnson County Commissioner Jim Allen to ask park officials how they will keep the deer population from getting out of hand in the future. The subject came up last week at a meeting of Johnson County Park and Recreation District officials and the county commission.

When the deer program was approved last summer, park officials suggested they would consider non-lethal options such as sterilizing some of the deer that remained.

Allen wanted to know if that would be pursued.

He was told that using this option involved a lot of red tape and was a lot more complicated than it might appear.

[Interestingly, you folks at JCPRD didn't seem to mind the "red tape" involved in acquiring the permits to hunt/murder out of season, getting authorization from the cities of Lenexa and Shawnee to violate their city ordinances to carry out the slaughter, getting permission from KDWP to violate state law by spot-lighting and using suppressors, hiring White Buffalo to commit the massacre, selecting and training your "sharp-shooters," selecting a "meat" processor, allegedly having the murdered deer inspected to verify they didn't have CWD that could be passed on to those who ate their rotting flesh, wasting two years of studies and meetings to come to the pre-determined conclusion that you would kill the deer, reviewing and processing hundreds of applications from salivating bow hunters who were itching to participate in slaughter number two, and more....Just who do you corrupt bureaucrats think you're fooling with your canned, inane, and indefensible assertions?]

Michael Meadors, the park district’s executive director, said the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks must first approve any program that traps and sterilizes deer.

That presents a “Catch 22” for such an effort.

[The only "Catch 22" is that the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks is a powerful and disturbingly anti-democratic pro-hunting entity that siphons off large sums of tax dollars used principally to enable 2.1% of the population to murder animals, gives zero consideration to the rights of the sentient, innocent beings it slaughters (or enables others to slaughter), and ignores the voice and will of wildlife lovers and non-hunters (97.9% of the population), who pay far more taxes than hunters and generate vast amounts of federal and state revenue.

To wit:

The 2008 Annual Report from the Department of Wildlife demonstrates that resident hunters make up only 2.1% of the Kansas population yet 46% of the Departments budget comes from state and federal aid. Expenditures for the Department are 60% for Fish and Wildlife better known as hunting.

Stats from 2008 Annual Report

People: 113,895 non resident hunters; 558,246 resident hunters; 2,600,000 population

Revenue: Hunt/Fish Federal Aid 19%; Other Federal Aid 12%; State General Fund 15%

AND

This report by the US Fish and Wildlife Service, another primarily pro-hunting entity, demonstrates the tremendous economic impact of wildlife watchers:

“The $45.7 billion spent on wildlife equipment and trips in 2006 contributed substantially to federal and state tax revenues, jobs, earnings, and economic output.”

A new report recently released by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service shows that expenditures for wildlife watching are equivalent to the revenues generated from all spectator sports, amusement parks and arcades, non-hotel casinos, bowling centers and skiing facilities combined. Using data from the 2006 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation, the Service's new addendum report Wildlife Watching in the United States: The Economic Impacts on National and State Economies in 2006 shows wildlife watching not only contributes significantly to people's enjoyment of the outdoors but is a major factor in the state and national economies.

Lloyd Fox, big game project coordinator with the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks, said no sterilization procedure has been approved by the department for use in Kansas. And it doesn’t appear there is likely to be one any time soon.

[Killing is your business and business is good. But, business for the state would be a whole lot better if wildlife lovers had both a voice and a seat at the table within state government. And we will get our voice and seat as the anachronism of sport and trophy hunting continues to die the slow, painful death it so richly deserves. We're relentless and patient. So pro-kill proponents, don't get too comfortable. GAHC is coming for you! Once we have that seat, we will see to it that immunocontraception drugs (not sterilization---another example of the semantics you serial killers love to use as a method of deception) become a widely used tool of wildlife management, particularly in urban and suburban settings.]

That could mean the park district is left with only one alternative—another culling program when the deer population begins to grow again.

[Yes, let's keep repeating the same mistakes. In case you small army of JCPRD employees who were present at the injunction hearing on 12/14/09 have forgotten the words of the Honorable Judge Kevin Moriarty to me, here they are again:

"I think that your concerns are well placed in that for the future because we do not want to continue to repeat the same problem over and over again, and I see that as more of a message that I agree with you on than what we have to do on this occasion. I think you’ve pointed out that there are alternatives. I think everybody has heard that. I think most people believe that. I know the District knows there are alternatives. And if we were to have to do this all over again, it would appear we have not learned from our mistakes. And that’s I think if there is anything we can come away with from today’s hearing is that your message has been heard, and hopefully it will change what takes place in the future."

Or the words of your director, Michael Meadors, to the very same judge on the very same day:

"Once that number is reduced, to answer your question, sir, the Board did ask that the staff evaluate thoroughly the use of non-lethal immunocontraceptives, chemical sterilization, others that could be evaluated and implemented. We will conduct a flyover census. The earlier measures were spotlight surveys. A flyover census and snow cover, no vegetation is a very accurate method to count the deer. And then we will provide a report to the Board following that census with recommendations of how the first two harvests were conducted, their success rate, and the hope of possible research and/or implementation of the non-lethal method that I mentioned."

And on 2/10/10, with no flyover census, no report to the board, no public input or commentary, no discussion, no vote by the board, and the victims from the most recent slaughter still warm, JCPRD is already announcing the necessity of the next round of killing. It doesn't get much more disingenuous, corrupt or undemocratic than that....]

“I’m not aware of any request or any permit that the department has issued to sterilize deer to attempt to control populations of free-ranging deer,” he said, adding the department doesn’t even have a policy on deer sterilization.

[Again, KDWP is a pro-kill, pro-hunt entity, desperately clinging to out-dated and intentionally ineffective means of wildlife management in a thinly veiled attempt to perpetuate hunting. Your callous, anachronistic response is no surprise, Lloyd. But your “because we’re the parents and we said so” argument doesn't make urban deer culls either necessary or morally justified, particularly in a situation like ours, where the deer population in Death Park has already been decimated. It’s time for you to move into the 21st Century! I suppose we’re going to have to drag you there. Remember, those whom you falsely believe to be your constituency, or at least that of your employer’s, are 2.1% of the population. We simply need to awaken the rest of the people to the fact that dinosaurs like you are murdering the animals we love and you’ll change your ways or wind up on the unemployment line.]

He said drugs and a vaccine have been created that keep deer from reproducing but those are experimental and are still being studied to make sure they are safe and effective.

[This is a blatant lie. GonaCon, an immunocontraceptive drug, has been approved for use by the EPA. Both GonaCon and PZP, another such drug that would render does infertile for 3-5 years, have been studied and used extensively for years. They've proven to be both safe and effective.

Kirkpatrick on PZP: "It works! It works well!"

And here are some comments from Dr. Jay F. Kirkpatrick, Ph.D., Director, The Science and Conservation Center (Billings, MT), who is a prize winning wildlife researcher with more than 20 years experience in the field of contraception and wildlife reproduction and who also holds a Ph.D. in reproductive physiology from the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell University.

"EPA approved GonaCon early last fall and I am delighted. We have applied for EPA approval of PZP for horses and the application is on their desks. We submitted our application late last summer and EPA has 21 months to act, one way or another. We chose to seek registration for horses first, because of the urgency of that issue and because it will involve far less politics than deer. EPA dragged USDA out for almost three years, largely because of the politics involved and the political machinations of state fish and game agencies."

"Now, all this said, the common drawback for both GonaCon and PZP is that states will not permit it to be given without capturing and tagging the deer first. EPA does not require this, because they understand neither protein can pass through the food chain, and so do the state agencies. However, by requiring capture and tagging, they essentially make deer contraception useless. Capturing and tagging is fraught with high rates of injury, some mortality and it makes the entire process hugely expensive. Only on some federal land can this be avoided, however, recently Valley Forge National Historic Park stated that it would bow to PA state Game Commission rules that require capture and tagging."]

After all, millions of deer are taken by hunters every year across the U.S. and the meat is processed and eaten.

[Which is precisely why you don't need to slaughter deer in our suburban, family park. Besides, tradition or status quo doesn't make an action morally just or right. Millions of blacks had been enslaved in the US for years prior to Emancipation. If the status quo is a moral justification for an act or a circumstance, why did we bother to eradicate legalized slavery?]

If a permit request was received for deer contraception, Fox said it would have to be reviewed by the department and the science behind the procedure examined.

Fox said an alternative to chemical sterilization is surgery but that is very expensive.

[Few, if any, wildlife advocates or animal lovers advocate surgical sterilization, Lloyd. It’s the IC drugs that terrify your beloved hunting buddies that we want to use. But you knew that before you made your remark to Sullinger.]

Meadors told commissioners than contraception methods could cost between $400 and $2,000 per deer, depending on the type employed. He said the state forbids park officials from relocating the deer.

[This is perhaps the most egregious and absurd lie amongst this pack of whoppers. $400 to $2000 is a ridiculously over-inflated estimated cost range. If we constructed a small-scale version of Anthony Marr's deer auto assembler that Bite Club proposed for use as a wildlife preserve for the excess deer population (before the massacre of 342 deer) SEE: http://biteclubkc.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/slaughter/, we could use food to lure the does into the DAA and still more food to draw them into a corner stall covered by dark canvass. At that point, a volunteer could inject them with the GonaCon or PZP, tag them, and release them.

With respect to the cost of GonaCon, per the USDA, "The vaccine itself costs very little per dose. The main cost of using GonaCon™ is associated with the time and money required to capture and vaccinate the deer. This cost can be several hundred dollars per deer depending upon many factors, such as how many deer need to be captured and whether the deer are easy or difficult to catch."

Here is Jay Kirkpatrick's take on the cost of PZP:

“The cost of the vaccine is $21/dose (we, by law, must provide it at our cost of production, with no profit), the dart costs about $1.50, and the bulk of the labor to do the darting is where the real cost lies. Costs will vary from site to site, depending on who is doing the work and what they are paid. If you want to pay someone $80,000 a year to dart deer, the cost will be high; if you want to use trained volunteers the cost is less; if you use employees already employed by a park, or agency, or whatever, the cost is somewhere between. I actually can't say what the costs would be in any given site because of these variables, but I kept the books for the first two years of the Fire Island project and the costs never exceeded $10,000. That included a two or three air fares from Ohio and Montana to New York, and we treated about 150 deer. My math shows that to come out to about $66/deer. I wonder who estimated the $1,000 per deer.”

Animal advocates from around the world, including organizations such as the Global Anti-Hunting Coalition (GAHC) and In Defense of Animals (IDA) and even small grass roots entities like Bite Club, are prepared to provide the funds and to volunteer the labor necessary to implement the DAA and to administer GonaCon or PZP. JCPRD, you spent in excess of $50,000.00 murdering 342 deer and illegally bartered deer carcasses in exchange for the services of wildlife-murdering bow hunters. We animal advocates are willing to provide our time, effort, and funds at no cost in order to manage the deer via non-lethal means.]

Park officials also have a budget of $50,000 a year to deal with invasive species, including plants and other animals.

[This is a non-issue, as animal advocates have offered to cover the costs and provide volunteer labor to manage the deer.]

The entire budget last year was used to control the deer.

[JCPRD, you turned our tax dollars into blood money and slaughtered 342 deer. And now you want to kill MORE innocents? Consider the fact that the Cleveland Metro Parks is now in its 12th year of lethal deer management and they intend to kill 286 deer again this year.

Lethal urban deer management is barbaric and it doesn't work! Stop killing our deer!]

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