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guest opinion
| 6/24/2009 10:16:00 AM Email this article • Print this article | |
Shot For A Tulip
James LaVeck
Ithaca
Is one of the most educated communities in America losing its mind?
Cayuga Heights has been said to have the most Ph.D's per capita of any municipality in America. Yet today, its trustees are on the verge of approving an expensive, dangerous, and frankly bizarre plan that if put into effect, is certain to put a serious dent in our community's well-deserved reputation for sensible, compassionate, and forward-thinking public policy.
As most people in Ithaca know, there has been a controversy around the fate of the deer in Cayuga Heights, whose appetite for tulips, heirloom tomatoes, and ornamental shrubbery has, in the minds of the current mayor and trustees, created a situation so dire and unacceptable, that action of the most extreme sort is not only justified, but urgently required.
According to the plan now being considered, every single deer in the village is slated to be violated or killed. The first phase involves capturing 60 female deer, surgically sterilizing them, then puncturing their ears with numbered tags and encumbering their necks with radio collars. These are the "lucky" individuals. The intended fate of every other deer in Cayuga Heights, including pregnant does and fawns, is to be shot dead at 8 to 10 undisclosed bait sites in our neighborhood backyards. This annual massacre, to become a part of our local culture, will be carried out by out-of-town contractors who earn their living exterminating wildlife.
The ethical grotesquery of this plan appears to be lost on those who conceived it, who seem to be oblivious to the mental and emotional torture that will be experienced by the few deer chosen to survive, not to mention the many people who care about these gentle animals. Year after year, deer in and around Cayuga Heights will be lured by piles of corn into the kill zone, and those marked for survival will watch as their herd mates are brutally killed right in front of them. Were such a sadistic policy to be carried out against dogs or cats, or horses, an outraged crowd of us would spontaneously rise up to stop it. But the deer, ironically, because they live free of direct human control and are no individual's private property, are somehow seen as unworthy of moral consideration.
Do we really want to live in a society where bureaucrats meet behind closed doors to arbitrarily decide how many of each species are allowed to live, then send technicians out to mark the few chosen to survive as ornamental reminders of a bygone era, doomed to move among us as freaks festooned with the trappings of their utter domination by humans? Do we want to cover the eyes and ears of our children as unsuspecting animals are methodically executed in our neighbors' backyards?
Living amongst us are many people who, through wise plant choices, and skillful use of fencing and deer repellents, enjoy beautiful gardens without causing harm to anyone. Mass killing and extreme control of our indigenous wildlife is neither necessary, nor ethical, nor safe. And if it is scientific at all, it represents science at its most twisted.
Everything about this plan is emblematic of the mindset that is destroying our planet, and at odds with what we stand for as a community. Because the trustees of Cayuga Heights have rejected proven and practical non-violent approaches to reducing deer-human conflict, because they refuse against all reason to allow residents to erect fences high enough to safeguard their plantings, should the rest of us just sit back and do nothing? Should we accept armed men firing deadly weapons in our neighborhoods, to protect tulips? Or is it possible, with all the brilliant, creative and compassionate people living in this community, that we can come up with a more sensible approach? I think we can. n
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This guest opinion was written by James LaVeck, an award-winning documentary filmmaker and a 20-year resident of Ithaca. He is one of the co-founders of CayugaDeer.org, Ithacans for Safe, Rational and Ethical Solutions to Deer Human Conflict. To find out what you can do, visit www.cayugadeer.org.
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 | Reader Comments
| |  | | Posted: Monday, July 13, 2009
Article comment by:
CarolineTC
Do they know that killing does not work because of the ecological principal known as compensatory rebound because after mass killing, less deer means more food aviable and does give birth to twin and triplets and some giving birth at younger age.
My blogger
http://mathew5-7.blogspot.com/
IC works
http://saveeastgoshen.com/deer_contraception.htm
| | | | Posted: Saturday, June 27, 2009
Article comment by:
Linda Leas
With regard to deer killing, it is important to know that deer equal dollars in the eyes of the Ohio Wildlife Division, as well as the professional "cullers." The huge number of deer in Ohio is not an accident of nature, nor due to the absence of large predators (those were gone in the 1800's). Deer can be increased in number by management techniques, including feed plots, cutting to create browse areas, and by hunting regulations that restrict the killing of does. More does left living means more births. This terrible situation is a result of an Ohio Wildlife Council appointed by the Governor and made up totally of hunters and farmers -- animal users. The Council issues the regulations. The OWD wants as many deer out there as the public and farmers will tolerate. That Department is mostly funded by hunting permit fees. Once the public wises up maybe things can be changed. Governor Strickland should be contacted and asked to make the Wildlife Council represent all Ohioans, not just the 5% that hunt.
| | | | Posted: Friday, June 26, 2009
Article comment by:
Roberta Pliner
This seems in part to be a herd-thinning problem. If so, why not lure the deer into the woods far from the residential parts of town and do herd-thinning there. More
important, people all over the country living on land previously occupied exclusively by
wildlife learn to plant i
greenery and flowers that deer don't like and to erect very high fences to keep deer out,
using deer repellant along those fences for good measure. Why does the solution to everything have to always be killing?
| | | | Posted: Friday, June 26, 2009
Article comment by:
Nancy Nagtzaam
What on earth is going on? Has Cayuga Heights lost all sanity? This is the most ludicrous plan I have ever heard of not to mention it is unconscionable behavior. Highly educated people? I think not! Cretins would be a better word for them.
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
Mahatma Gandhi
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Suicide has recently come to Ithaca in a very public, and at times controversial, way. This past academic year, after three years with no suicides, Cornell experienced what is known in the scientific community as a "suicide cluster." OK, so maybe you're like me and you thought this whole JetBlue flight attendant story was good for maybe one news cycle.  |
