Neither Hunting Nor Pharma Control Is Right For Deer
Priscilla Feral’s Comments Before Westport, Connecticut’s Environment, Health & Human Services, and Public Protection Committees
September 22, 2010, 8 pm: Westport, Connecticut Town Hall Auditorium
Good evening to everyone here. I am Priscilla Feral, president of Darien-based Friends of Animals, an international animal-advocacy group. Since 1957, we have been working to enlighten our community to the environmental, ethical, and psychological benefits of living in respectful harmony with the rest of the biocommunity of which we’re all a part.
We at Friends of Animals acknowledge the inherent value of deer in Fairfield County, as well as their participation in the ecology. This means transcending the reliance on hunting and other forms of human management and control over deer populations.
Rather than talk up perceived problems, then begin a cycle of expense, force, and harm, as many other communities have done, we believe Westport can and should commit to the sensible and responsible approach. This would involve understanding the natural tendency of deer to balance their numbers. If tension related to deer is a problem for Westport, the best answers begin by acknowledging that hunting contributes to the imbalance.
Hunting deer permits a community to say we’re “doing” something — true. But it’s not the enlightened thing.
Westport’s Committees have been told that hunting is a viable means to control the deer population. Other methods, such as birth control and relocation, are said to be costly and ineffective. In fact, birth control, relocation and hunting are all costly, ineffective, and — thankfully — unecessary.
The call to manage is historically a product of practices that manipulate deer for the benefit of shooters who want targets. They are part of the problem, not the cure. As for bow-hunted deer, they have been seen bleeding with arrows stuck in their flesh for two miles before the arrow’s owner can climb down from a tree stand and catch up and finally cut the panicked animal’s neck. When New Canaan allowed bow-hunting, Friends of Animals took telephone calls from shocked residents with bleeding deer struggling on their lawns.
No wonder hunting is losing its appeal in our state — mirroring a country-wide trend that has seen the hunting community wane for two or more decades.
Follow the money to understand why such a hobby gets backing from Connecticut’s Department of Environmental Protection. The agency benefits from hunter licensing fees and federal excise taxes on weapons and ammunition.
Fewer than one percent of Connecticut residents hunt. According to the National Survey of Fishing, Hunting and Wildlife-Associated Recreation, 12.5 million U.S. residents purchased hunting licenses in 2006 — a decline of 10 percent from 1996. In contrast, 71 million U.S. residents identify ourselves as people who love to observe and photograph birds and other free-living beings.
Since it’s no longer widely acceptable to call hunting recreation, hunters invent social benefits to justify deer control. We hear about the need to defend wildflowers from over-browsing. We hear about heading off collisions between automobiles and deer. We’re told hunters feed the hungry. We hear that hunters protect our communities from Lyme disease.
The Fairfield County Municipal Deer Management Alliance recently released its “Economic Impact of Deer Overpopulation in Fairfield County,” a report that accepts those justifications, and sets out to soften resistance to deer killings on private property. Officials can use the study to buttress costly notions that paying new fees to shoot deer will ensure public safety and save us all money on landscaping, medical costs, and auto-repair needs. But the data, as an editorial on Sept. 3 in the Greenwich Time and The Advocate pointed out, comes from a 2003 survey of residents in Bernards Township, New Jersey. When it comes to matters involving deer, it would appear that Fairfield County is on a result-oriented mission rather than a quest for enlightened leadership. Let’s look at biological and ecological realities.
Human control of deer, elk and other animals drives a phenomenon that’s been tagged “evolution in reverse” — making the smaller and weaker deer more likely to survive. And it can cause deer populations to increase in a cyclical reaction to us. Their biology answers our assaults. As so it is that the more deer we hunt, the more deer we get.
In contrast, nature itself works to balance deer herds according to available food, territory, the health of carnivorous animals such as coyotes, and winter weather, which restrict food and range. Numerous studies over the years have shown that limits to food and sheltering foliage causes animal populations to limit themselves; but it doesn’t take scientific studies to make the point. Most people with common sense know this.
Deer do not cause Lyme disease. Black-legged ticks carry the disease when immature, on smaller mammals and birds. Our dogs can also carry the ticks (and wiping out deer would make the dogs even more attractive candidates for ticks). Vigilant checks for ticks on the body and prompt removal, especially in summer and early autumn, are important for preventing the disease.
Friends of Animals studied the matter of cars hitting deer. We found evidence that hunting exacerbates car accidents, as it can frighten deer out of their normal meanderings and into unfamiliar terrain and roadways. Of some 1.5 million reports of U.S drivers hitting deer every year, about half of these accidents occur in October, November, and December. Hunters will attribute this to deer being sexually active, but these are the months when hunters themselves are active. The claim that hunting reduces car accidents is not solid, and we have prevention techniques that do work, such as reflectors combined with regular road maintenance and speed limit reductions.
Doing the right thing takes patience and education, and over time, this will make Westport a better community. We are ready to work with Westport on this.
You just heard from Laura Simon of the Humane Society of the U.S. that Westport should put deer on birth control. The HSUS hold the permit to use an experimental contraceptive, known as PZP, on deer and other animals. This substance often does “work” in the sense of preventing pregnancy, but it has been shown to prolong animals’ lives (because they do not experience the natural stress of reproduction), thus counteracting the effect of population reduction.
Moreover, claims that the drug constitutes humane and enlightened treatment are dubious at best. PZP alters natural interactions among the deer, changing their capacity to procreate and thus evolve. Post mortems of deer used in PZP experiments have shown severe abscesses at the site of the darts, and shown that the deer suffer from pelvic inflammatory disease induced by the substance. It is also a difficult feat to apprehend the deer and continue the doses.
Before thanking you for my time today, I’d like to mention that I grew up in Westport. I am not an impediment to Wesport’s hopes and best aspirations; rather, I and the organization I represent have come here today to ensure that Wesport — a holdout against ill-considered reactions against animals — continues on an ecologically and ethically responsible course.
All around us, nature is being managed to death, with malls and freeways taking its place. Animals are being driven from the land on which they were born and concentrated into smaller areas and blamed for a laundry list of ills they never created. It’s time for communities to call for ceasefires, and reverse a trend that’s bad for all of us. Community leaders should deliberate on the facts, seek and nourish what’s best in our community, and keep recreational and controlled hunting, deer contraception and sharpshooting out of Westport.
Thank you for granting me time to address you this evening.
Priscilla Feral
Friends of Animals
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15 Comments
On September 23, 2010, DIANE M. KASTEL wrote:
All around us, nature is being managed to death, with malls and freeways taking its place. Animals are being driven from the land on which they were born and concentrated into smaller areas and blamed for a laundry list of ills they never created. It’s time for communities to call for ceasefires, and reverse a trend that’s bad for all of us. Community leaders should deliberate on the facts, seek and nourish what’s best in our community, and keep recreational and controlled hunting, deer contraception and sharpshooting out of Westport.
On September 23, 2010, Mia Wyatt wrote:
Thank you for presenting an enlightened argument against hunting and other deer population control methods!
On September 23, 2010, Cindy Grimes wrote:
I totally agree with the words of Ms. Feral, and I could not have said them better.
On September 23, 2010, Peter Hood wrote:
Westport residents need to ask careful questions, and begin to DEMAND that town officials seek and incorporate into their discussion, much more than pro-hunting propaganda from groups like FCMDMA, or state officials who drive so-called wildlife “management” programs, which regard and identify animals as “game” that needs to be “managed” for maximum sustainable yield so that hunters can engage in a recreational activity that is on the decline. Who is behind the relentless effort to knock Westport’s resolve down? Who benefits? Who makes money and whose jobs are at stake? Aside from the ethical considerations, nearby towns have proven that hunting is not an effective tool to resolve perceived problems with wildlife.
On September 25, 2010, AK wrote:
I believe that this is an inaccurate perception of population management. Since it is commonly accepted to spay or neuter your pet, and virtually impossible to contain all deer to spay and/or neuter, hunting is a logical and controlled means of curbing the population. As far as the cost, it is all absorbed by the hunter: cost of license, equipment, hauling away of the animal, and for the true hunter, the game is consumed, not just thrown by the wayside.
FoA comments:
It’s not reasonable to compare population dynamics between domesticated animals and free-living ones. In nature the deer population is limited by predators, food supply, available habitat, and disease. For dogs and cats these limitations are largely absence.
On September 27, 2010, joni moretti wrote:
Stop hunting and killing these beautiful animals. Humans caused this problem due their unnecessary need to overpopulate.
On September 28, 2010, G. DiFonzo wrote:
I’ve read that PZP use in mustangs has led to out-of-season foaling, putting undue stress on the mother and often killing the offspring (i.e., foals being born in the middle of winter and dying of exposure). Does anyone know whether this happens in deer too?
On September 28, 2010, jtjw wrote:
what if hunting deer is the only way to live
[Editors’ note: What if you were a wolf, then that might be half-true. Wolves eat rabbits, beavers, rodents, along with ungulates, but humans are not wolves. We
have grocery stores, farms, plenty of plant-based food, especially in North America.]
On September 28, 2010, claude wrote:
If you all want a voice involving the matter of should hunting be allowed or not fine then you all need to petition for a excise tax on your cameras and film/memory cards and hiking boots and have to purchase a license to go out and hike or film/photograph the animals.
If i have to pay an excise tax on my equipment and purchase a license for my hunting then so should all of you wildlife watchers until then leave my hunting alone hunters pay the bulk of the money that makes public land and forests possible if it wasn’t for us and our money your favorite public park or forest would probably have been sold by the state or city to make way for a new super-sized mall.
FoA comments:
I think taxes on hunters would be better spent on education. Then people might be smart enough to protect the environment without killing the animals that are an important part of it.
On September 29, 2010, Dustin Rhodes, Friends of Animals wrote:
Dear Claude,
Hunters don’t make public lands and forests possible, Nature does. (Call it god or whatever else you want, but the point is, humans, let alone hunters, have nothing to do with it). Let’s be honest: humans have a propensity to destroy the natural world, not preserve it; and the last thing Nature needs is someone thinking they can manage it.
On September 29, 2010, claude wrote:
Dustin,
One it can be managed and has been successfully for a long time. It was hunters who noticed the big decline in animal populations after years of non-regulated hunting There was a time not all that long ago that in many parts of the country that seeing a white-tailed deer was a big thing cause they had almost been wiped out completely.
Hunting regulations were put in place and the animals slowly came back and repopulated and now the deer are too many in most places and regulated hunting ensures that the animals will be there for generations to come and not have a massive die off from starvation and disease.
Just look at Yellowstone’s elk population with no hunting for a long time allowed there the elk population exploded even with natural predators and food had to be hauled out every winter to feed the growing population because people like you all bleeding heart liberals didn’t want to see them starve to death.
Also hunters spend money to hunt through license and tag fees and hunting equipment we pay a extra federal tax which goes to keeping public forests open and free from development if the land just sat there not making the state or city money they would just sell it off to the highest bidder and it would be clear cut and you would have a new housing development or mall or even just a parking lot in what once used to be prime wildlife habitat.
FoA comments:
The hunters didn’t just innocently notice “the big decline in animal populations after years of non-regulated hunting,” but were obviously the cause of the decline. Regulated hunting only makes it easier for hunters to consistently kill more animals.
The forests are not in good shape at all — largely being damaged by human-based activity such as pollution that causes acid-rain.
With more people enjoying passive recreation in the forests, there are more people in support of protecting the forests than ever before compared with the dwindling number of hunters who couldn’t do the job.
On October 1, 2010, Barbara Paolucci wrote:
How about protecting these animals just because humans shouldn’t be killing them? They have just as much of a right to live without interference from humans as we humans do.
On October 6, 2010, scott wrote:
If there wasnt hunters then you people would have no place to go look at your prescious deer. Hunting is done 4 months out of the year and you people act like it is the most cruel thing in the world, we arent slaughtering them, its usually one shot and its done. You people have no idea what hunting is, you just listen to the lies you hear or read and you think thats what every hunter is like. Yes they are dumb hunters ones that dont respect the wildlife but most of us just enjoy the hunt and enjoy the meat in the freezer we dont just go out and kill everything in a bloodbath as you make it seem. And if it wasnt for hunters then you wouldnt have anywhere to go see you “animal brothers” because hunters pay for it all to be protected. We enjoy them just as much as you and probably have more respect for the animal then you do. Ive seen them up close and spent a hell of alot more time with them then you guys probably have. If you dont hunt then thats fine but poeple do so just leave it to that. They are places that you can go to watch deer that arent hunted by humans just go watch them there.
On October 6, 2010, Lee Hall, Friends of Animals wrote:
Scott, hunting has not been done in Valley forge National Historical Park. Hunting is not permitted in the Park.
The status quo in the Park is to let the deer live as they’ve been living in the park, unmolested.
You are wrong, Scott — the plan is definitely about a bloodbath when contract rifle operators are procured to come in and kill some 85% of the deer.
On October 27, 2010, anonymous wrote:
I don’t belive in any type of hunting. I think that hunting is cruel & only serves those that enjoy it. Back in the day, it was needed because it was the way our ancestors were able to get food & other necessary goods. Unfortunately, there are food rescues organizations (ex. CT Food Bank) that encourages deer hunting. Why would they do something like this?? They can get protein sources from local supermarkets, etc. Very discouraging & cruel. I honestly hope that we humans can learn how to share this habitat with our fellow creatures. We are just another species like the deers are. Thank you!