Posted on 01/06/2017 8:38:15 PM PST by nickcarraway
Ann Arbor has revealed its plan to control the deer population, which includes sterilization efforts followed by lethally removing up to 100 deer on public lands.
The city says its deer management program has three components: sterilization, sharpshooting and community education.
The sterilization step is set to take place from Jan. 22 through Jan. 29, every day from 3 p.m. to 5 a.m in two designated areas where sharpshooting of deer cannot occur (Wards 1 and 2 on map). The process will be performed by a city contractor, White Buffalo, which will locate female deer and dart them with tranquilizer darts equipped with tracking devices.
Once darted, the deer will be tracked until they are unconscious (typically just a few minutes), and then transported to a temporary surgical site where a veterinarian will perform ovariectomies. All sterilized deer will be fitted with numbered ear tags, and one mature doe in each group will be radio-collared to facilitate future program efforts, track migration rates and patterns and assess survival rates. The entire process, from initial darting to release, takes approximately one hour per deer.
“There aren’t any closures associated with the sterilization program,” city spokesperson Lisa Wondrash told WWJ’s Beth Fisher. “The contractor, for the majority of the time, will be working during the nighttime hours when deer are active but residents are not. So for all intents and purposes, residents really won’t have any impacts to their daily lives and most likely won’t even see the activities occurring.”
The next stage, the lethal portion, will take place from Jan. 30 through Feb. 13. in designated city parks and natural areas, which will be closed every day — including weekends — for all purposes from 3 p.m. to midnight.
Sharpshooting will not occur from a moving vehicle but may occur from a parked vehicle. The sharpshooitng activity will take place in the following parks:
Bird Hills Nature Area Bluffs Nature Area Cedar Bend Nature Area Hilltop Nature Area Huron Hills Golf Course Huron Parkway Nature Area/Braun Nature Area Island Park Kuebler Langford Nature Area Leslie Park Golf Course Leslie Woods Nature Area Nichols Arboretum – University of Michigan (closed Jan. 30 – Feb. 2) Acreage south of Glazier Way and east of Fuller Road – University of Michigan (closed Jan. 30 – Feb. 2) Acreage south of Hubbard and west of Huron Parkway – University of Michigan (closed Jan. 30 – Feb. 2) Signage in multiple languages will be posted at the designated parks and nature area entrances and other access points to notify visitors 24 hours in advance of closures
The final stage of the plan involves implementing an education program that increases the community awareness of the role of deer in the local ecology, and offers residents options to manage potential deer impacts on their private property.
Miller said the deer management program is necessary to protect the city’s ecological balance.
“We recently had conducted a scientific study that was showing a high number of vegetative impacts within our natural areas, and in order to get that moving in the right direction the deer reduction is necessary,” she said. “And it’s also to help with the complaints that we’ve been experiencing with residents feeling that deer are overpopulated, which would attribute to car crashes and things of that nature.”
This is the second year of the city’s four-year plan to manage the deer population.
Send them to me up here! They will fit right in with the rest of them!!
Y can’t they eat them?
Of course, the problem would be solved by opening up a special hunt. The venison would benefit many a family. To bad the anti-gun animal rights PC has a problem with that.
But vivisection and release in the dead of winter is okey dokey. Most will be pregnant, so I guess they get deer abortions as a bonus.
I hope they at least allow the meat to be consumed.
What has this Ann woman got against Deer?
I didn’t see anything about how the problem happened.
They are real good about wishing to wastefully kill animals for plants. But if the existing plants are unable to support the large quantity of deer, why kill the deer, plant more plants. what they are failing to see is that If the deer consume their food source, they will move on. And if there is such a low food source currently, why are there so many deer there? And how did it get to that point? If they artificially destroy the deer, with they have a herbacide problem with too many plants. Every time man plays God, he screws it up. Remember the wolves in Yosemite? They just don’t learn.
red
Good grief. How many tax dollars are paying for this?
She wants to nut them. Mebbe one bit her sister.
“If the deer consume their food source, they will move on.”
No they wont. They will yard up in the area and starve to death first. When they get to browsing off the pine, that means they are near the end.
Ever seen a deer yard in the winter?
100, please... i've seen more than 100 in two adjacent fields with the Starlight citysuckers love deers more than they love their wives and children since they seem to have NO PROBLEM with them getting maimed, crippled and killed while hitting them because of over population
Leave it to the Goobermint espurts to figure b out a way to spend a million dollars to control deer populations when people are willing to pay them to do it for them.
Must be that common core...
The Ann Arbor plan will accomplish nothing because the whole county is overpopulated with deer. If they kill 100 there are more then enough outside of town to move in.
I think it is mostly because there is not enough hunting to keep the population in check.
Why is there not enough hunting? Many folks with land don’t allow hunting. Many parcels are not big enough. There are individual houses and small subdivisions everywhere scattered outside of town. There is not much land to hunt it seems.
I drive my son to school on a rural road just north of town and we often see dozens of deer standing about in adjacent fields.
Well heck, if sterilization is this easy, start with Chicago and Detroit next. There’s a whole bunch of hood rats there who need sterilizing so they can hump to their hearts content and not make any more gang thugs and disabled kid torturers.
At the rate they’re killing each other they should be gone in one generation as long as more aren’t being made.
Yes, this is satire, but as in all satire there’s a good amount of truth in it.
They should cull the herd organically by introducing grizzly bears.
BTTT
I live in the northwest, east and south of Tacoma. We have a lot of wooded land here to include a huge amount at Fort Lewis. Matter of fact, the largest black tailed deer in the state are taken off the Fort Lewis lands every year in Washington. But the deer do not actually stay on the post. They roam higher in the hills during the summer and migrate out of the snow down to the post every year. But when the thaw hits, and they can get food higher, they’re gone.
Deer do migrate up here and we have a lot of open land for them to cross. Open meaning un-housed, few highways, and not many large bodies of water to stop them. But the deer we have here apparently migrate for food and rut. And, also, when the black bear and cougar are loose on Fort Lewis, now JBLM, they move higher.
red
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