Deer to spare
Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 4:54 pm
Who wants to become a consultant and get paid $180 an hour to hunt?
http://www.economist.com/world/unitedst ... d=14849852
The war on Bambi
Nov 12th 2009 | ST LOUIS
From The Economist print edition
Taking back the gardens
AP Coping with a winsome problem
IN JUNE 76-year-old Dorothy Richardson of Euclid, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, discovered a fawn nestled in her garden. She picked up a shovel and beat it to death. It was one more battle in a war being waged from coast to coast.
As humans spread into once-rural areas, deer learned to adapt. With few or no natural predators, and thanks to the advent of hunting bans in developed areas, they thrived. There are an estimated 30m deer in America now, more than there were a century ago. The growing herds in urban and suburban areas have sparked a number of programmes to control the animals, not without controversy among humans.
In Town and Country, a suburb of St Louis, Missouri, the problem has reached a dire stage. The community suffers, on average, a collision a week between a deer and a car, and the animals are scoffing plants of all kinds in yards and gardens. After a series of heated hearings the city has decided to spend $150,000 on getting sharpshooters to kill 100 deer and veterinarians to sterilise another 100. The city has already tried other methods including paying for the relocation of deer, an ineffective tactic (the deer just came back) that has now been outlawed. The suburb has also banned people from feeding the deer, which has upset residents who like them.
Other communities are following Town and Country’s example; some are trying contraception, while others are trying to kill the deer with bows and arrows. The culls are provoking an angry reaction in places. In Shawnee Mission, Kansas, a part of metropolitan Kansas City, the city plans to kill three-quarters of the area’s deer, paying outside consultants $185 an hour and donating the venison to food banks. Animal-rights activists recently blocked the entrance to a park with a sign saying “Death Park, Closed for Cruelty.” The leader of the group earlier walked into park headquarters and deposited a severed deer head on the counter. In the recently-completed statewide urban deer hunting season Missouri’s Department of Conservation reported more than 1,200 kills.
Back in Euclid Mrs Richardson pleaded no contest to one count of cruelty and was fined $500 and given 80 hours of community service. But as the deer numbers mount, critics are wondering whether there is much to choose between her method of animal control or the organised harvesting in Town and Country.v
http://www.economist.com/world/unitedst ... d=14849852
The war on Bambi
Nov 12th 2009 | ST LOUIS
From The Economist print edition
Taking back the gardens
AP Coping with a winsome problem
IN JUNE 76-year-old Dorothy Richardson of Euclid, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland, discovered a fawn nestled in her garden. She picked up a shovel and beat it to death. It was one more battle in a war being waged from coast to coast.
As humans spread into once-rural areas, deer learned to adapt. With few or no natural predators, and thanks to the advent of hunting bans in developed areas, they thrived. There are an estimated 30m deer in America now, more than there were a century ago. The growing herds in urban and suburban areas have sparked a number of programmes to control the animals, not without controversy among humans.
In Town and Country, a suburb of St Louis, Missouri, the problem has reached a dire stage. The community suffers, on average, a collision a week between a deer and a car, and the animals are scoffing plants of all kinds in yards and gardens. After a series of heated hearings the city has decided to spend $150,000 on getting sharpshooters to kill 100 deer and veterinarians to sterilise another 100. The city has already tried other methods including paying for the relocation of deer, an ineffective tactic (the deer just came back) that has now been outlawed. The suburb has also banned people from feeding the deer, which has upset residents who like them.
Other communities are following Town and Country’s example; some are trying contraception, while others are trying to kill the deer with bows and arrows. The culls are provoking an angry reaction in places. In Shawnee Mission, Kansas, a part of metropolitan Kansas City, the city plans to kill three-quarters of the area’s deer, paying outside consultants $185 an hour and donating the venison to food banks. Animal-rights activists recently blocked the entrance to a park with a sign saying “Death Park, Closed for Cruelty.” The leader of the group earlier walked into park headquarters and deposited a severed deer head on the counter. In the recently-completed statewide urban deer hunting season Missouri’s Department of Conservation reported more than 1,200 kills.
Back in Euclid Mrs Richardson pleaded no contest to one count of cruelty and was fined $500 and given 80 hours of community service. But as the deer numbers mount, critics are wondering whether there is much to choose between her method of animal control or the organised harvesting in Town and Country.v
we will not allow it.
