Deer Preserve or Killing Field: We HAVE a choice….

Bite Club’s billboard, which is located off of I-670 West just outside of Kansas City, MO, gets 55,000 views per day

Don’t forget our protest at the 9/16 meeting of the JCPRD board. It starts at 6PM and will be at the JCPRD admin office in SM Park at 7904 Renner Rd. Email willpowerful@hotmail.com if you need directions.

JOCO’S IMMORAL, CRUEL AND INEFFECTIVE PLAN:

If you are not familiar with the plan concocted by the Kansas Department of Wildlife and approved unanimously by the JCPRD board, it involves employing sharpshooters to kill 75% of the deer population in Shawnee Mission Park as they come to feed at bait stations. If the sharpshooters are unsuccessful in killing 300 of the 400 deer, bow-hunters will gleefully descend upon our beloved family park to finish the annihilation.

If this massacre takes place, blood, entrails, carcasses, bones and other deer remains will undoubtedly remain as macabre reminders of the unnecessary, cruel, barbaric, unjust, and illogical decision to annihilate 300 deer in a park to which many come for the express purpose of seeing deer.

Consider the psychological impact on our children. How do we explain the slaughter to them?

And consider the fact that deer culling is happening in communities across the country, and in case after case, the slaughter becomes an annual “necessity” because of the compensatory rebound effect (http://defendurbanwildlife.org/news/Compensatory%20Rebound%20Effect.pdf).

Take a look at the following short videos to visualize the abomination that the Kansas Department of Wildlife and JCPRD board are bringing to Shawnee Mission Park:

Aftermath scenes from a cull in Rochester, MI:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qZ1wB0GdaXE

The Abject Cruelty of Bow-hunting:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zw4MyyM1utc

Exposing the lie of the “humanity” of sharpshooting:

http://www.sharkonline.org/?P=0000000431

A powerful video created by Susan Bennett, one of our stalwart campaign activists:

http://biteclubkc.wordpress.com/2009/09/05/a-holocaust-is-coming-to-johnson-county-ks/

My local allies and I have canvassed Johnson County for the past two months, engaging and educating people we encounter. Thousands have expressed their dissent against this heartless and unnecessary scheme to eradicate 75% of the deer in Shawnee Mission Park. A mere handful has expressed their support. The public doesn’t want this to happen, so why are we doing it?

Factoring in the national and international activists with whom my local allies and I are associated, the deer have tens of thousands of defenders who are prepared to give their time, energy, and money to save them. We have both the will and the means to put a nonlethal, just, logical and compassionate plan into effect. I presented just such a plan to the JCPRD board, the KDW, and the JOCO Board of County Commissioners on 9/5/09 via email and to date, have not received a reply.

ANTHONY MARR’S MORAL, SANE, JUST, AND PRAGMATIC PLAN:

My friend, ally, and highly-esteemed wildlife and Earth defending activist, Anthony Marr (http://www.all-creatures.org/hope/about-am.htm), has devised a brilliant nonlethal solution to the perceived problem of deer over-population in our beloved family park.

This is a “broad stroke” outline and it may exceed Johnson County’s budget for “managing” the deer, but we deer defenders, who number over a hundred locally and have linked with activists like Anthony across the country, have enough intellectual firepower amongst us to flesh out the details AND we have the tenacity and extensive networks to raise the funds to cover any monetary shortfall that may exist, thereby averting the grim prospect of turning Shawnee Mission Park into a killing field.

Back in the late 1990s, Anthony Marr worked in 3 tigers reserves in India, and the idea originally stemmed from there. One of the problems he had to deal with was deer (Cheetal) coming out of the parks to raid the surrounding farm land. One of his challenges was to round them up and move them back into the park. Considering that cheetal deer are extremely fleet-footed, the only thing that could work was the Deer Auto Assembler.

The DAA is an extremely simple device, involving nothing more than fencing and one-way gates.

The DAA Marr set up in India was no bigger than a basketball court. He installed one inward-facing one-way gate on each side of the enclosure, put some food inside, and just let it sit. Within days, the DAA would be full of deer, which he then transported back into the park. How this technology can be applied to Shawnee Mission Park is as follows:

Of the 1200 acres, set aside 10-50 acres for a Deer Auto-Assembler (DAA), which involves fencing it, with inward one-way gates every hundred yards or so.

Place food inside the gates as enticement. Deer will enter but cannot leave. In this case, assuming it is correct that the total deer population is 400, and the optimal deer population is 25 (which Marr believes could be too low), let 375 enter the DAA, leaving 25 outside, then lock the gate.

Apply Immuno-Contraception (IC) on the deer using the PZP multi-year vaccine. The PZP vaccine is highly effective and inexpensive – between $20 and $40 per dose, as opposed to $300-$500 per deer to use a sharpshooter.

The PZP multi-year vaccine is a pellet administered by hand injection. A sub-mechanism of the DAA is a small internal compartment in one corner with a narrow chute covered by black fabric ending in a food trough, where the deer can be easily injected through the fabric while they feed. The deer will not see the operator, and no handling of the deer is required.

Feed the deer inside the DAA to keep them in prime condition and to protect the ecology within the DAA. The DAA can be used as a wildlife viewing area, complete with viewing tower, which could bring in revenue.

Each year let a few deer into the DAA to maintain the outside population at 25 (or a higher number). Apply IC on the new deer which have entered the DAA.

The deer in the DAA will age and die off, except for the few new ones allowed to enter the DAA from year to year. After the initial several years the deer population inside the DAA will decline due to death by aging, while the deer population outside the DAA will be kept near 25 from year to year.

Problem solved without the need to kill a single deer.

Shooting with guns or bows is not effective due to the Compensatory Rebound Effect, where an increase in food per deer will maximize the deer’s reproductive rate significantly.

Bow-hunting has a close to 50% non-lethal wounding rate, so that for every animal killed and recovered, at least one would be non-fatally wounded. Unrecovered animals die slowly and painfully of infection or starvation. Those who don’t die often suffer disabling injuries.

Together we can make Johnson County an international model of justice, logic and compassion. We have a unique opportunity to enhance rather than destroy the image of our community.

Let’s hold Kansas public officials’ feet to the fire!

Flood them with your pleas, requests and demands that they implement Marr’s plan:

Michael Meadors (Johnson County parks director)
Michael.Meadors@joco.gov.org
913-438-7275

Kansas governor Mark Parkinson
http://www.governor.ks.gov/comments/comment.htm
1-877-579-6757

Johnson County Commissioners
BOCC-Commissioners@jocogov.org
(913) 715-0430

Lloyd Fox (big game project coordinator with the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks)
lloydf@wp.state.ks.us
(785) 296-2281
(620) 672-5911

Watch the video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIjanhKqVC4 and go vegan. Do it for your health, for nonhuman animals and for the Earth!

To support or undertake animal rights and liberation activism in the Kansas City area, visit Bite Club of KC at http://biteclubkc.wordpress.com/.