METROPARKS TAXPAYER-FUNDED DEER SLAUGHTER 

IT'S TIME FOR A REVOLT

We need your help in calling a halt to 17 years of taxpayer-funded deer slaughters in the Cleveland Metro Parks. If you do not live in Ohio, after signing this petition, please, turn your attention to the deer slaughters that YOUR taxes are funding in your state/county/city.

After 17 years and over 4,000 dead deer, the Metro Park's annual killing program has failed. And yet it continues with no end in sight. Park officials came up with an airtight argument filled with spinned, corrupt science and distortions which brings much scorn from legitimate scientists. They continue to spread the gospel of violence and cruelty as a solution, counting for success, upon the indifference and ignorance of the public. Vilifying the deer is an easy sell to a public who have been conditioned to believe that killing can effectively manage wildlife populations.

Thanks to an unholy alliance between the ODNR (Ohio Division of Natural Resources) and the Metro Parks, the outdated, primitive, reprehensible and merciless ritual of slaughter continues. Demographic changes are responsible for a steep decline in hunting. Since the sale of hunting licenses pays the salaries of state game agency employees, their response has been to come up with schemes to recruit and retain more hunters. Hunters, (not the approximately 95% of Americans who do not hunt) are their only constituency. And wildlife are nothing more than a cash crop and a means to a lucrative and violent end.

In 1998, Metroparks and the ODNR launched their scheme, and the killing spree began. The deer sought refuge from their killers in our suburban neighborhoods. When this phenomenon occurs, look at nearby areas, where deer hunts or mass extermination plans are taking place to see why.  Deer are pushed (into neighboring suburbs), pulled (by baiting and refuge seeking) and “managed” (to intentionally increase their numbers-the goal of an agency in the pockets of the hunting and firearms industries).

DON'T BUY THE LIE

In response to killing programs, female deer increase their home range by an average of 30% (Henderson Warren et al 2000). Hunting increases birth rates or keeps them high. In the absence of hunting, birth rates DECLINE (Julander et al 1961)

Terry Robison, Metro Parks' Director of Natural Resources, erroneously stated in a recent Plain Dealer article (1/15/2015): “the so-called compensatory rebound of deer reproduction is largely illusory.” Dr. Allen Rutberg, leading scientist on deer biology and immunocontraception, and Director of the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, responded to Robison's statement: “He's arguing that the killing is maintaining herd numbers well under ecological carrying capacity, so that the deer are already reproducing as fast as they can, which of course maximizes the number of animals that have to be killed every year. (The National Academy of Science essentially made this point in critiquing the round up-and-removal process by which the BLM attempts to manage wild horse herds.)” After reviewing the numbers, he concluded that they are managing for MSY, Maximum Sustained Yield, not to control impacts.

Dr. Jay Kirkpatrick, director of science and conservation biology at Zoo Montana, and foremost authority on wildlife reproduction biology asserts that: “population reduction speeds reproductive rates-that's zoology 101 in your freshman year of college. We refer to it as density dependent reproduction. In virtually every species from rats to you name it, if you reduce populations, they simply speed up their reproduction rates.”  Perhaps Mr. Robison missed class that day.

Metro Parks kills deer to aid and abet the ODNR in creating urban hunting zones in just about every city in northeast Ohio. They exploit the rebound effect, to intentionally over populate deer to the point the public complains about the impact, and then they offer further killing as the only solution. The cause is never a solution, especially when the cause is violent and lethal.

The pools of blood left behind each year remain as macabre reminders of the unnecessary, cruel, barbaric, unjust and illogical continuation of the slaughter.

See footage of the blood pools here

The following video is undercover footage taken in a Summit County Metro Park. Deer were SHOT, SUFFOCATED AND LEFT TO SUFFER. This is what Ohio's Metro Park doesn't want the public to see. Why should we believe that it is any different now?

Watch the video here

Wildlife management in twentieth century America has but one objective, the manipulation of nature for the purpose of elevating target species.

The worst of human nature on full display. The deer pay with their lives and your tax dollars are turned into blood money, to ensure that the ODNR and Metro Parks (working in concert) will be there to attack the victims wherever they try to find refuge.  AND, SINCE KILLING DEER DRAMATICALLY INCREASES THEIR REPRODUCTION, YOU WILL GET TO PAY FOR THE SLAUGHTER FOREVER—OR UNTIL YOU HELP US STOP IT.

When dealing with politicians whose stock in trade is political expediency and bartering of favors, only significant political pressure will put an end to wildlife slaughters. Metro Parks is now being exposed as a place where systematic, coordinated killing for profit and perverse pleasure is entrenched.

Thousands of deer have been slaughtered in grossly inhumane ways by insensitive and sadistic men protected by regulations designed to hide the cruelty from the eyes of the world.

THIS IS NOT A SOLUTION, JUST A SLAUGHTER

The silent majority has been silent too long. Please join Deer Defenders of Ohio in our fight to stop it.

We, the undersigned, demand to know why, when modern technology offers science-based, proven, non-lethal solutions, you choose mass slaughter. We demand that you immediately halt all deer killing in the Metro Parks, and that you stop turning our tax dollars into blood money. It is far past time to end this inhumane, ineffective approach that has failed miserably at controlling the changes occurring within the parks.