4/13/04
Dear New York Times:
According to “Green Thumbs on the Trigger” (4/8/04), “gardeners have had it with deer.” On the contrary, gardeners and the 95 % of New Yorkers who do not hunt have had it with bloody hands on the trigger. State and federal wildlife mismanagement agencies exist solely to promote hunting and to provide recreational opportunities for hunters.
Each dishonest, destructive step in the program – habitat manipulation (replacing native plants with those favored by “game” animals), hunting (which increases population), hunting promotion programs, and destroying forest to provide access roads and other services for hunters – serves this agenda.
As sprawl and human overpopulation force animals onto ever smaller parcels of land, these mismanagers intentionally increase animal populations, manipulating the public into believing that the animals are to blame for, and that more hunting is the solution to, real or perceived wildlife/human conflicts.
Knowing that the public naturally abhors cruelty to animals, the mismanagers demonize the animals, misleadingly call their mismanagement science, and relying on PR maneuvers (such as donating the unhealthy corpses to food banks) to hide the orchestrated suffering.
The article puts a positive spin on deer killing in Princeton. To see the cruel reality of net and bolt killing, watch the videos at
http://www.sharkonline.org/indexrocketnetting.mvGREEN THUMBS ON THE TRIGGER