Deer Cull Talking Points We aren't Hearing

[XLFD]

Back in December of 2022, the walls of public opinion on the deer cull was closing in on the City of Ludington with opposition forces creating websites and lawsuits reflecting the approximately 75% of the citizens that were against it, some of who were speaking up at meetings of the city council and school board, who approved the cull on their elementary school property where the school was at. 

Before the council ultimately changed their minds due to that pressure to have the cull, City Manager Mitch Foster asked the USDA's Wildlife Services APHIS division (the federal agents who would be conducting the cull) for supportive material for the upcoming event.  The Ludington Torch has been able to retrieve those historic documents through FOIA and presents those findings here, and analyze how it affects our current situation, where the council has unwisely decided it wants to cull deer again.  In December, while the cull was still pushing on, our city manager asked for guidance:

Each of these seemed reasonable asks for keeping the public safe and informed.  Public notices to let the folks know about what's happening, signage to remind people to stay away from areas where culls were taking place, and language for 911 operators to use if the folks start calling in suspicious gun-wielders and shooters near their homes.  Foster and others with the city and beyond were told that they had no such material.  In typical bureaucratic fashion they designated those responsibilities back to the city and admitted that the best they had were some general talking points:

Tanya didn't share those general talking points, however, until Foster shot her back another email asking for them, at which point Tanya sent him back a list, but with a rather odd request not to post them in their entirety:

It's not hard to see why they didn't want these talking points shared when one looks at them analytically, because they illustrate what a complete waste of resources these deer cull operations are.  It's better for them all to work in the darkness like their cullers and explains why the council quickly approved deer cull 2.0 this October, without any sort of details about it explained to the public-- or known by those voting for that matter.  Here is that document broken down into parts for analysis so we can see why Tanya doesn't want them divulged to the general public. 

This intro tells us that WS is an extremely professional and extremely safe program.  Tanya has already shown us that WS delegates all of the notice and signage issues back to the city-- showcasing WS's dedication to being extremely professional and safe in this cull program.  Not, but let's look further at the safety and professionalism of the WS program:

Nothing in all of the written record the Ludington Torch has received covering the correspondence and memoranda between the City, the DNR, and the USDA has there been any consideration of integrated deer management, Zero point zero.  it's been only about lethal culls.  If WS uses and recommends an approach using non-lethal techniques to Ludington's deer problem (which has never been qualified or quantified) they have never offered it or even suggested that alternative. 

The Cooperative Service Agreement (CSA) passed and never rescinded last year in Article 3, section 2 and Article 7 says that private sector service providers may be hired for the deer cull and nowhere does it tell us that all or even some of the participators are wildlife biologists, wildlife specialists, experts in the field of WDM, firearm experts, or even trained in anything relevant.  

If they are practicing safe principles, how do they justify coming into the city without any kind of safety mitigation plan and leave all aspects of public notification, signage, and selecting a presumably-safe location to the City of Ludington?  If they are practicing humane principles, why use baiting, which the DNR has banned for our area because it can lead to CWD in deer, and why use spotlighting, which the state legislature has also banned as inhumane and unsportsmanlike?  If they are practicing effective principles, why isn't the eradication of enough deer to make a difference in the culled area never guaranteed in any way?

Translation: "If our experts tell the public when the cull takes place, we believe they will make problems for us with that knowledge.  It's less of a problem for us when they are kept in the dark, and it allows us to take more deer, or at least fudge the kill numbers because nobody will ever know the difference."

Question: if not giving public notice, not putting up cull warning signs in public areas, or not notifying folks of when an area may have shooters of unknown expertise operating without any safety mitigation plan is safe-- what exactly would you consider dangerous?

As Councilor John Terzano pointed out in October, the city has no idea about what the city's deer population is, operating on a faulty claim of nearly 400 deer in a 3.6 square mile area, a figure without any adequate basis or validation.  The CSA says WS will remove deer in areas with high numbers of complaints and damage.  The City has never shown any amount of damage or complaints on city property, so why are we culling when the only complaints from the public so far has been by property owners of one or two lot parcels where shooting of any kind would be prohibited by law due to safety considerations?

This talking point, the last one on the sheet, is the one most devoid of reality, but it has an iota of truth.  Deer culling 'experts' are not hunters, they lack the sportsmanship and obeisance to the rules laid down by state and local legislators that hunters have.  The CSA and the rest of the record shows that WS 'experts' have no idea what Ludington's deer problem is about, they have simply been hired as contracted killers, without any consultation or tip of the hat to any method of controlling a perceived deer problem by anything other than coming here and slaughtering as many deer as possible with the only rule being that they can't go beyond the properties selected for culling.

How can one resolve wildlife disease issues by using methods that the state has determined promote wildlife disease (baiting)?  How can one resolve wildlife damage issues when the only complainants are a few small property owners complaining about deer incursions that they could easily thwart through sensible landscaping and nonviolent methods, rather than at great expense and with unsafe violence? 

But the biggest lie in these talking points is the idea that they will be complying with all state and federal laws.  Seriously?! 

Spotlighting deer (see MCL 324.40113) is not in compliance with the law, while the DNR does not currently allow baiting in the lower peninsula except through special permit, it is not within the rules without such permit.  The record shows an absence of such permit when WS engaged in baiting activities in 2022/2023 before the City cancelled the cull.  

As the 2022 CSA has never been rescinded, the cull is still scheduled to take place on the grounds of Ludington Elementary School, in the lawsuit filed last year, we saw that there were/are at least two federal law violations and three state law violations.

Had the City not took the wise course of calling off last year's cull, WS personnel would have committed violations of five state and federal laws due primarily to city administrators not telling the school or these strangers to our area that they would be shooting high powered rifles on school property.   Look at those special considerations in the contract which weren't followed:

Expect our city leaders to do more of the same this year; that's exactly why they offer no specifics on this year's program, because they are still legally in the same flawed agreement they had last year, with all of its violations of law and all of the shortcuts taken in order to keep not only the public in the dark about almost everything dealing with this cull, but those unknowing 'experts' in Wildlife Services too.

[Willy]

Thanks again for taking all of the BS the City hands out and revealing the truth about what is really going on. What you have posted should make all citizens stop and consider not only how they have bamboozled everyone regarding the deer cull but you have revealed just how sneaky these people are and how they manipulate the system in order to satisfy their small group of supporters. What you have exposed regarding the cull as well as the Foster school fiasco shows everybody how business is really conducted by City Hall. This is another example of how the logic of Government and reality collide. If the deer cull is meant to rid Ludington of deer then why is it being proposed to take place on land [Ludington school property] which is located outside of the City. And even though Cartier Park is located in the City limits it is located almost completely outside of the City proper. Again, how is culling deer at the far northern portions of the City going to reduce the deer herd in the City itself? Another excellent article X backed by facts.

[XLFD]

Good point, cull advocates think culls work for the area they are held in, so why are they cool with the school forest (outside of the district) and Cartier Park, effectively outside of the city limits because it only borders fenced-in Lakeview Cemetery and Hamlin Township, being the cull areas.  Yet for some reason the 5000 other migratory deer killed in the county, the 300,000 others killed in the state by hunters don't make a difference, but a dozen in a forest outside of the city limits does.  Deer are not territorial.

[woodsman]

That article is written by someone who hunts from a desk, useless info... Author Lindsay was an editor at a Georgia hunting and fishing news magazine for nine years.  

[XLFD]

You may disagree with the author's pedigree, but the author does put out part of a study to show the point that deer are not territorial in general.  And this was why I included the link rather than some others one can find also noting that.  

A home range is the area merely occupied by an individual. A territory is something that is defended. Whitetails are, in general, not territorial. There are exceptions. In spring, at or around the time a doe is about to give birth she will drive off other deer from the birthing territory. This is a very temporary arrangement and will only last until the fawn can get up and walk on its own, perhaps a day or two. In the fall, a buck that is paired up with a doe will drive off any potential rivals so in essence, he is defending whatever patch of ground that doe happens to be standing on at that precise moment. But otherwise, deer are not territorial.

[stump]

If they are going to shoot the deer, shoot them with a tranquilizer gun and transport them to the state park. And again having tax payers of the City of ludington pay for a deer cull outside of the city limits is just plain stupid.

[woodsman]

  Wire Nooses where used very effectively on the wolf population and dropped them to for the most part to extinction. I think some trappers are a much better way to go. No bullets 24 hour a day hunting and no the big blood trails. Transporting them will just mean a long walk to get back to where they live, animals love their home and will return rather quickly...

[RK Hubbard]

I had to laugh at the amazingly stupid statement that the purpose of the cull is to "reduce the deer population to a level that the current ecosystem can accommodate," since it is obvious that the current ecosystem can already accommodate the current population of deer. The deer cull will reduce the deer population BELOW what the current ecosystem can accommodate, whereupon the deer population will increase back to the current level. 

[XLFD]

If the current ecosystem could not accommodate the deer, we'd be seeing a lot of malnourished deer and destroyed vegetation throughout Ludington.  Haven't seen any sickly thin deer in the city limits, and beyond a couple anecdotes from magpies tending poorly protected backyard gardens growing deer-friendly flowering plants and veggies for browsing, I have yet to hear of anything approaching environmental devastation.  There was never a credible public purpose for the cull, all of these documents show that, and so your amusement over the stupidity of their population reduction phrase is well-placed.