Wed 29 Aug 2007
Truth becomes an endangered species at the Point Reyes National Seashore
Posted by DavidMitchell under General News, History, Marin County, The Point Reyes Light Newspaper, West Marin nature, Wildlife
[6] Comments
A spotted axis doe with a white fallow doe in the Olema Valley. Ever since the Point Reyes National Seashore in defiance of public opinion set out to eradicate their herds, the park administration has repeatedly contradicted itself regarding who would benefit from their meat. (Photo by Janine Warner, founder of DigitalFamily.com)
Seldom are prophecies as quickly fulfilled as one in my Aug. 8 posting regarding the duplicity of the Point Reyes National Seashore administration. Anyone who still takes seriously the park administration’s public statements might do better to take note of this chronology:
In an attempt to sugarcoat the shooting of axis and fallow deer in the National Seashore, the park administration in early summer repeatedly told the press that dead deer would be given to the Redwood Empire Food Bank in Santa Rosa and the St. Vincent de Paul Society in San Rafael.
In late July as White Buffalo Inc., the gunmen hired by the park, were preparing to begin their slaughter of 80 deer, the National Seashore administration told the press that no longer were all the slain deer earmarked for feeding the needy. Some carcasses would now go to Hopper Mountain Wildlife Refuge to feed condors.
On Aug. 8 just after White Buffalo started shooting deer, this blog warned that National Seashore statements about what would happen to all the dead deer were not to be trusted. When culling had been carried out in the park 20 years earlier, it was noted, those deer shot where the park’s hunters would have had to carry them a ways had been left where they dropped. It eventually turned out that most dead deer had not gone to feeding the needy even though the park had told the public that’s what was happening.
The Point Reyes Light on Aug. 23 published a photo of a dead fallow deer and said members of the public had found two such carcasses in the Olema Valley. The Light also reported: “National Park officials had received word of the deer but were as of yet unable to determine who was responsible for their shooting.” There has been a history of poaching in the park and park officials noted that poaching is ongoing. “It could very well have nothing to do with us,” said park spokesperson John Dell’Osso.
The West Marin Citizen that same day reported that someone else had found six carcasses of deer shot to death in the Olema Valley. The paper quoted park spokesman Dell’Osso as by then saying, “We’re basically stopping the work that was going on so we can look into this specific situation a bit more. If we find out this was part of our program, then it’s not acceptable.”
The Citizen also quoted Tony DeNicola, president of White Buffalo, as saying none of the dead deer found in the Olema Valley were shot by his gunmen. “He asserted that his hunters would have removed any animals they killed within a matter of hours,” The Citizen reported.
But the park administration’s line kept changing, and by the time The Marin Independent Journal interviewed Dell’Osso for its Aug. 23 edition, the park spokesman was saying that, contrary to what he and White Buffalo had previously told the press, some dead deer were deliberately “left in the park to provide food for scavenging animals.”
This is an arrogant indifference to truth masquerading as wildlife management. In a month’s time, the National Seashore administration’s story went from: 1) all the deer meat is earmarked for feeding the needy; to 2) some of the meat will not go to the needy but will be fed to condors; to 3) rotting carcasses of deer found shot to death in the park could well have been killed by poachers; to 4) if White Buffalo did, in fact, leave dead deer lying around, that would be contrary to park policy; to 5) the park told White Buffalo to leave some carcasses strewn about as food for scavengers.
And as The Light’s photo demonstrated, the main scavengers are typically vultures and maggots. The park administration wants to increase the amount of flies around here? And is willing to withhold meat from poor people to do so?
And what about the killing itself? The Aug. 2 Point Reyes Light reported that White Buffalo’s gunmen “aim for the head because a bullet to the head kills a deer in 30 to 90 seconds.” Yet the Aug. 23 Light notes the dead deer in its photo was shot in the shoulder. And The West Marin Citizen simultaneously reported receiving photos of six dead deer that “were shot primarily in the body, which could have caused unnecessary suffering.”
Welcome to the Abu Ghraib National Seashore where only the bad guys know how bad things really are.
6 Responses to “ Truth becomes an endangered species at the Point Reyes National Seashore ”
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[…] 54. Truth becomes an endangered species at the Point Reyes National Seashore. […]
What I don’t understand is, why…
Why does the Park Service want to do this and in such an inhumane way?
The deer slaughter epitomizes the growing brutality of the Point Reyes National Seashore under Supt. Don Neubacher.We all remember Neubacher’s passionately defending to the point of dishonesty (as the Marin district attorney confirmed) an out-of-control ranger, who had sadistically pepper sprayed an innocent teenage brother and sister in 2004. The Park Service later paid the teens $50,000 to settle a lawsuit over the brutality, and the ranger now works at Sequoia National Park.
When gay senior citizens complained about the same ranger’s bullying them, Supt. Neubacher found a gay man’s website containing erotic fiction set at a place called “Hagmire Pond.” Neubacher then publicly quoted the fantasy as evidence that gays were openly having sex at “Hagmaier Pond” in the Golden Gate National Recreation Area. In short, Neubacher is willing to make any claim, no matter how dishonest and sordid, if it suits his purpose.
It’s worth remembering that in 1978, the National Seashore imported tule elk from San Luis Island near Los Banos, Merced County, only to find elk herds also grow. The Park Service in 1993 assembled a tule elk panel that concluded that the elk herd should “self-regulate” its own size but that rangers should eliminate the fallow and axis deer. The panel chairman went so far as to complain that the National Seashore’s allowing the fallow and axis to live was “due entirely to public interest in viewing them.”
Once again the goddamn “public interest” was getting in the way of government policy.
Allied with the present park administration are a small crowd of Taliban-like zealots, who mostly work for the park or in concert with it. These self-righteous advocates for parkland purity are offended that too many people are enjoying the wrong animals when they visit the National Seashore. Too many visitors wander off enthralled after seeing a white deer when they should instead be grimly watching their steps to avoid stepping on a snowy plover.
Had they been born in Kabul instead of the ‘burbs, the anti-“exotic-deer” zealots would have been in the front line six years ago blasting apart Afghanistan’s two 1,500-year-old statues of Buddha. Foreign deer don’t belong in the USA anymore than statues of Buddha belong in an Islamic-fundamentalist country, it would appear.
But the park is not pristine, and the West Marin history it contains does not belong to the Point Reyes National Seashore administration or its Taliban cohorts. Humans have shaped Point Reyes for 4,000 years minimum, Europeans for at least a couple of hundred. More than 40 percent of the species of plants in the park plants are non-native. So are countless animals from muskrats to possums, to red foxes, to cows and horses (whose right to be there is guaranteed by the law that created the park), to Argentinian ants, to starlings, to bullfrogs, to nearly 2 million tourists a year.
Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey, the Marin Humane Society, other animal-rights groups, and innumerable West Marin residents have urged Supt. Neubacher to control herd sizes with contraception, but the park administered contraception only to the does and shot their mates.
In short, the inhumanity of the deer killing appears to be a reflection of Supt. Neubacher’s characteristic ruthlessness. So why doesn’t the regional office of the Park Service rein him in? One answer may be that his wife Patty Neubacher is the deputy director of the regional office.
In the effort to preserve the native plants and animals at Point Reyes National Seashore, the National Park Service has implemented a plan to eliminate the non-native Fallow and Axis deer populations at Point Reyes by 2021 through a combined contraception and lethal reduction method. As a member of the
Congressional Friends of Animals Caucus, I believe action must be taken to reduce the non-native deer population at Point Reyes
National Seashore using humane reduction methods.
On July 17, 2007, I sent a letter to the Superintendent of Point Reyes National Seashore, Don Nuebacher, regarding my concerns about the lethal methods being used to reduce the Fallow and Axis deer populations. In the letter I stated my interest in working to find a solution that will preserve and protect native species and at the same time ensure humane treatment of the non-native deer population. In addition, I stated that I am particularly interested in
the increased use of contraception to reduce the deer population.
In response to my letter, the National Park Service stated that they had already conducted environmental studies and found that there was no viable alternative other than completely eliminating non-
native deer through combined lethal and contraception methods.
While the National Park Service is currently moving forward with their plan to gradually eliminate the non-native deer populations, I
am still a strong advocate for safe and humane population reduction through contraception methods. Be assured that I will
keep your thoughts in mind as I continue to work to protect the rights of animals and to preserve our national parks. — Lynn Woolsey, Member of Congress
With such accusations, this “news source” is lucky not to have been sued for defamation.
Truth is an absolute defense against claims of defamation.