ACTIVIST ALERT! KANSAS PLANS MASSIVE DEER KILL!

[Guest guest]

Dear Activists:The Congressional Rep for the county where the deer massacre is planned is Democrat Dennis Moore. Use the info below to bypass his 'constituents only' email system, so that ANYONE can email him. Please let him know that sterilization is cheaper, more effective, and a viable solution to deer overpopulation. And that he should investigate ALL non-lethal methods over killing!http://moore.house.gov/htbin/formproc_za.pl?/moore/contact/zip_authen.txt & form=/moore/contact/email.shtmlCONTACT FORMNAME: YOURSADDRESS: GENERAL DELIVERYCITY: LAWRENCESTATE: KANSASZIP: 66044 - 6420PHONE: 555-1212EMAIL: USE , HOTMAIL, G-MAIL, ETC.Sample letter: [There is VERY limited space for

comments]As representative of the district where sharpshooters and bow hunters plan to kill more than 500 deer this fall, I believe you have a FIDUCIARY obligation to taxpayers to investigate NON-LETHAL methods of controlling the deer. Please understand that mass killing does nothing more than exacerbate the problem. Nature will quickly fill the void left by these killings. Instead of taking the word of hunting organizations like the WILDLIFE FEDERATION and pro-hunting officials, educate yourself regarding sterilization options. Please contact a leading expert in the field: Anthony Marr anthonymarr he has been giving lectures on this subject around the country for years. Signed,JOHNSON COUNTY TO USE SHARPSHOOTERS / BOW HUNTERS TO KILL DEER http://www.kansascity.com/105/story/1258459-p2.html“Legalized hunting is the only way to control deer,†Barling

said.But Anita Colman of Mission said that shooting the deer is a quick fix:“There are long-term options that are cost-effective in the long run, such as sterilization. Let’s start planning a non-lethal program now that prevents another slaughter.â€The board’s decision means that more than 500 deer will be killed to reach the goal of 50 per square mile.The “harvest†will be held sometime this fall. Feed will be set out and the deer will be shot when they come for it.Volunteer police sharpshooters are to work during the morning and only where bait is set out, said Randy Knight, a park district spokesman. The park will be closed on those mornings and then reopened later in the day.Park officials said the culling may need to be done a couple of mornings each week for several weeks.Wildlife experts will then survey the deer population. If it’s still too large, Knight said, bow hunters will be

called in, and the park will remain open. But he said that areas where they were working would be off-limits to the public.The passion aroused by the deer situation in Shawnee Mission Park has been replayed in other locations nationwide, wildlife officials say.A fervent love for deer heightens the debate.“They think you’re killing Bambi,†sighs Mary Burnette, an associate director of the non-profit National Wildlife Federation.But the blame is not all Walt Disney’s. He merely exploited the human tendency to prefer the cute to the carnivorous.In fact, wildlife biologists have another term for it: “Anti-predator bias.â€In other words, if the problem is coyotes, the answer is to get rid of them.Deer? Not so fast.Tony Adams, a Johnson County park board member from Overland Park, said public reaction would be different if the problems were rats or snakes. “It wouldn’t even be an

issue,†he said.The debate is likely to grow more common because the wildlife federation says whitetail deer are overpopulated all over the country. Doug Inkley, senior scientist for the federation, has had three auto collisions with deer in suburban Washington.On the Missouri side, managed deer hunts in overpopulated public parks have been commonplace for years under the supervision of the state Department of Conservation.Wildlife Regional Supervisor Deb Burns said pushback from the public has been limited, although she recalled a Parkville woman who objected to a hunt there because she had named every single deer.Inkley of the wildlife federation said deer overpopulation causes a ripple effect.“It changes the plant composition in the forest and can change the species of songbirds in the treetops,†he said.One alternative to a managed hunt would be to introduce natural predators.“But the

reintroduction of wolves and grizzlies (in a city park) is not something that’s viable,†Inkley said.~END~News Times, Danbury CT - by Susan TuzSeptember 29, 2007SCIENTIST BACKS BIRTH CONTROL FOR DEERWildlife preservationist Anthony Marr thinks fertility control can solve the problem deer overpopulation better than hunting. He talked about the subject Thursday night at the Newtown Meeting House in Newtown.Marr worked in the Canadian outback for more than five years as a scientist for mining interests. His experience there led him to take courses in wildlife biology and to become an advocate for non-lethal deer management. "I developed a respect for the animals I saw in the wild," Marr said. "In the late 1990s, I went to India and worked on three Bengal tiger preserves, controlling the deer population there." Marr became interested in studies of deer fertility control vaccines in the U.S. and Canada. He

believes culling deer herds by hunting leads to increased deer populations rather than reduced ones. He has come up with a method to vaccinate deer with contraceptive drugs that he thinks will be labor- and cost-effective. It is now being studied by the Environmental Protection Agency. "Vaccine delivery contraceptive GnHR (Gonacon) has been passed on from the FDA to the EPA. This is a sign that the vaccine is closer to the time when it will be approved for use," Marr said.Marr said the major obstacle to using the vaccine is the labor-intensive nature of having to inject it into deer. But he believes a method he used in India to capture deer that strayed from the preserve would work for trapping deer in large numbers for vaccination. The method he recommends is to erect nylon netting corrals and bait the deer with food. The corrals would have gates they could enter but not exit. A hallway of nylon netting would be attached to the corral, and food

would be used to entice the deer to enter the hallway. Scientists could then lift a flap on the hallway netting and inject the deer with the vaccine. They would lift another flap and tag the deer to show they had been vaccinated. State Department of Environmental Protection wildlife biologist Howard Kilpatrick questions Marr's idea."I don't know what the terrain is like in India, but I'm sure it is different than that in Fairfield County," Kilpatrick said Friday. "It doesn't sound feasible." Kilpatrick said there have been numerous studies with free-ranging white-tail deer in the U.S. in which fertility control didn't work. He noted that "too many vaccine-treated deer are still producing fawns" for fertility control to work at this point in the vaccine's development. "Things may change in the next 10 years," Kilpatrick said. "They may have a new agent that works on 95 percent of deer. Now the agent works on 60 to 70 percent of the deer on an

average." Paul Curtis, the extension wildlife specialist with Cornell University, has studied fertility control in deer for several years -- using vaccines himself on test herds and following studies by his colleagues. Curits finds GnHR to be "very effective on deer population reduction, reducing pregnancies by 90 percent."But the technique still requires booster shots every other year. "Contraception vaccine's scale is limited," he said. "GnHR can work in a small scale on a few square miles of herd travel. You can (vaccinate) a couple of hundred deer at a cost of $1,000 a deer. But that will work only in small, isolated parks. The scale is too big in large, suburban areas and large deer populations. " Marr still pushes for contraception over hunting. "Culling as a method is inhumane, cruel and does not give the effect wanted," he said. "For the first few months after the hunt, the number of deer is lower, but hunting only works for a short

time." Marr cited numerous cases of controlled hunts where the deer population grew years after the hunts were started. This was due to an increase in available food, which resulted in increased reproduction.One such case was at Monmouth Battlefield State Park in New Jersey. In 1990, Fish and Game officials "pushed through" an annual deer hunt there, Marr said. By 1998, the number of deer in the park had increased 27 percent from the time the hunt was initiated. "After nine years of killing 600 deer, hunting failed to reduce the deer herd," Marr said of the New Jersey park. But Carol Kandoth, a wildlife biologist with New Jersey Fish and Game, said Friday she did not know where Marr was getting his data. "Monmouth Battlefield State Park has its own deer management zone and they operate in special areas (where human use of the park is not extensive)," Kandoth said. "My records indicate a stable population there based on the

hunts."www.DeerOptions.com