“[Point Reyes National Seashore Supt.] Don Neubacher has all the control over all of us out on the point, and we know that, and it’s scary.” Kevin Lunny, oyster grower and cattle rancher

A symbolic depiction by Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco (1883-1949) of official ‘Cruelty‘ toward common people.

When the Inspector General’s Office of the Interior Department confirmed two weeks ago that Neubacher and park senior science advisor Sarah Allen had misled county supervisors and the public about Drakes Bay Oyster Company, the press reported the fact but unfortunately ignored the surrounding issues:

The Inspector General’s report is far more critical of Neubacher and Allen than one might think from the spin park officials and their friends have put on it.

All the press reported Lunny had been initially unwilling to sign a use permit with the park for his oyster company, but only The San Francisco Chronicle even hinted at why: initial drafts of the permit agreement would have ultimately put him out of business.

None of the press took time to look into Neubacher’s trying to harm the Lunny family’s beef operation (on historic G Ranch) in retaliation for Lunny’s lining up widespread support for his oyster company. Not only did the park superintendent try to sabotage the acclaim their beef ranch was receiving, the Lunny family found themselves in protracted negotiations with his administration over renewal of the ranch’s lease. The Inspector General said it hadn’t found evidence of retaliation but failed to investigate some of Lunny’s key complaints.

Future postings will provide a closer look at what the Inspector General actually revealed about the park’s war against Drakes Bay Oyster Company. This week’s posting looks at merely one of the many ways Supt. Neubacher has harassed the Lunny family.

The story begins in 2006. Lunny (left), who is active in Marin Organic, wanted to be able to promote the fact that as a rancher he is a good “steward of the land,” so he applied for certification from an organization called Salmon Safe. The Oregon-based nonprofit issues certificates to agricultural operations that use their land in a sustainable fashion, preventing erosion and avoiding pollution of waterways.

Salmon Safe, which had never before certified a livestock operation in California as sustainable, investigated Lunny’s beef ranch for a day in late 2006. Two weeks later, the organization certified his ranch as sustainable with hearty congratulations for being the state’s first. (Since that time, Mike and Sally Gale’s beef ranch in Chileno Valley and a few vegetable farms have also been certified.)

“We expected the Park Service to be thrilled that one of its ranches met the Salmon Safe certification requirements,” Lunny told me last week, “but Neubacher called Salmon Safe’s executive director and said, “You absolutely cannot certify this ranch.” Lunny said Neubacher accused his family of being “good actors,” who were, in fact, “overgrazing.”

Lunny also claims Neubacher told Salmon Safe’s executive director, “This is my park, and you will not certify any ranch in this park without my permission.”

Salmon Safe executive director Dan Kent declined to relate Neubacher’s comments but noted that after the park superintendent’s call, the organization put Lunny’s certification on hold until his ranch could be inspected again.

In early 2007, Salmon Safe’s investigators flew in for a second review. In order for the National Seashore to show the investigators its concerns, “the Park Service was going to send a representative,” Lunny recalled, “but the Park Service didn’t show up.”

The investigators then called the park’s range specialist, Lunny said, but “he said he was too busy to show up.” The investigators, however, finally got the park to send a list of complaints. None of them held up. For example:

The park had complained about piles of plastic left over from covering fermenting silage, but Lunny pointed out that the plastic is hauled off and “recycled two or three times per year.”

The park had complained that the Lunnys mowed their silage too low, but investigators found the grass was two feet high. In addition, Lunny uses a “no-till drill” to plant grass seed, so the humus mat of his pasture does not erode.

The park accused Lunny of not having a fence between his pasture and Drakes Estero, where he grows his oysters. In fact, none of the ranches along the estero have such a fence yet cattle seldom go near the water, he said.

Following the second inspection, Lunny at last received certification from Salmon Safe. Kent, the organization’s executive director, told me, “Lunny Ranch is a leader in environmental sustainability. We hope that certification will convey that to the public in Point Reyes and beyond.”

And while he would not reveal his dealings with National Seashore Supt. Neubacher (above), Kent (left) on Monday noted, “This was the most politically charged Salmon Safe certification in 12 years and more than 300 site inspections.”

The Lunny family had complained in writing to the Interior Department that Neubacher was “undermining” their “certifications,” but the Investigator General investigators’ report never addresses this example of harassment.

An operation aimed at eliminating a herd of axis deer near Marshall Beach in the Point Reyes National Seashore was abruptly halted Monday morning after numerous news organizations learned of the killing and showed up to report on it.

The killing was being carried out by riflemen from a firm called White Buffalo, which the National Seashore hired last year. White Buffalo had planned on using helicopters to herd the axis herd into ravines where they could be gunned down en masse. However, the shooting stopped after 18 deer out of a herd of 80 were killed.

Axis deer on L Ranch in the Point Reyes National Seashore just before the killing began. (Photo by Trish Carney of San Rafael.)

“It looks like we might have successfully stopped the axis-deer slaughter that was scheduled for early this morning,” a pleased Trinka Marris of Inverness Park said later Monday. Trinka had organized protests this morning on Marshall Road and at the Bear Valley headquarters of the park.

Approximately 20 protesters took part, including representatives of WildCare and In Defense of Animals.

“The park had blocked the roads, and the White Buffalo helicopters were launched, but when our protest showed up at the roadblock [not far from Marshall Beach], with camera and reporter in tow, the word got back to park headquarters,” Trinka recounted.

Hired with grant money, a company called Full Court Press has been getting publicity for the axis and fallow deer’s plight in the Point Reyes National Seashore. Monday evening Trinka told fellow protesters, “Thanks to the remarkable firm that has been hired to help with this campaign, by 10 a.m. the park was crawling with new crews from ABC, NBC, CBS, KTVU, and The Independent Journal.

“By 11 a.m. the helicopters had been put away, the all-terrain vehicles that carry the carcasses were back at maintenance, and the mission had been aborted.”

Today’s protest began at daybreak, and Trinka thanked “the 20 or so dedicated people” who showed up. “It was not easy getting up at 4:30 on a stormy Monday morning, but we did, and I think we bought these beautiful creatures at least one more day of sweet life.”

Earlier today Trinka reminded me that the park has consistently refused to let the public see how the killing is done.

Despite what the park has claimed, “it’s not one bullet to the brain,” Trinka said. If the public could see how brutal the killing actually is, “no one would stand for it.” Indeed, deer hunters in West Marin have complained that many of the deer shot by White Buffalo suffer long, agonizing deaths from “gut wounds.”

White Buffalo is under contract to kill fallow and axis deer in the park through June, at which time the eradication program must be reviewed and a new, one-year contract signed, Trinka said.

Members of Congress and the California Legislature have asked the Bush Administration’s Department of the Interior to at least temporarily stop the killing until it can be thought through better. The National Seashore, however, has responded that under the government’s contract with White Buffalo, it can’t afford to stop.

On Monday, Dr. Elliot Katz, president of In Defense of Animals, countered by offering to pay the rest of this year’s contract with White Buffalo. The veterinarian made the offer directly to both White Buffalo during the protest on Marshall Road and to National Seashore Supt. Don Neubacher during the protest at park headquarters.

The Neubacher administration has told the public that the main reason for killing off non-native deer in the park is so they won’t compete with the native blacktail deer for forage. Pressed by the press today, however, the park superintendent conceded that White Buffalo’s riflemen sometimes shoot a few native blacktails that are hanging out with the fallow and axis herds.

The park’s claim that there would be more native blacktail deer in the park if the axis and fallow were not eating so much forage is, of course, sheer propaganda. The buildup of brush and dry grass is annually such a problem that the National Seashore regularly conducts controlled burns to reduce the risk of wildfires.

Providing the biggest check on the blacktail population of federal parkland here, as can be seen along Highway 1 from Muir Beach to Marshall, are motorists. Fresh carcasses of deer struck in traffic are daily sights in West Marin. This is hardly surprising now that the National Seashore attracts more than 2.2 million visitors annually, and neighboring Golden Gate National Recreation Area lands, hundreds of thousands more.

Update as of Wednesday evening: Demonstrator Saskia Achilles, who has continued to track the axis-herd eradication, just reported, “All road access is blocked by park rangers in trucks when the hunting is going on, so I have only been able to get close on foot, and not at night, but I see their helicopters in the deer’s valley, and I see nets with a heavy load getting carried by the helicopter….

“Today they stopped again when a media helicopter flew over,” she added, “and resumed right after [it left].”

“It looks to us from the field that they are killing 20 to 30 every night [and] … and that their aim is to have wiped out the entire axis herd by the end of Thursday.”

Although Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger last Thursday proposed closing Tomales Bay State Park to save money, several knowledgeable people here doubt that will happen, especially if the opposition is sufficiently vocal.

Park visitor Dave LaFontaine of Los Angeles hikes through Tomales Bay State Park. Photos by Janine Warner, founder of DigitalFamily.com.

The park, which includes Hearts Desire Beach, Indian Beach, Pebble Beach, Shell Beaches I & II, and Millerton Point totals 2,000 acres. It is among 43 parks statewide the governor wants to close to save a total of $13 million per year.

With state-government spending in fiscal 2008-09 now projected to exceed revenue by $14.5 billion, the governor has proposed slashing 10 percent from most departments’ budgets. That would reduce healthcare for 6.6 million low-income people in order to save $1.1 billion a year. Spending on public education (kindergarten through high school, junior college, the state university system, and UC system) would be cut by $4 billion.

The governor, whose personal wealth is more than $100 million (The San Francisco Chronicle has reported), proposed that spending on Social Services for poor families be cut by $390 million per year. Schwarzenegger would likewise cut child-welfare payments by $84 million per year. Aid to low-income people who are blind, otherwise disabled, or elderly would be cut by $300 million per year. Care for foster children would drop by $82 million per year.

“I have made it very clear we cannot tax out way out of this problem,” Schwarzenegger said. “There’s no reason to tax anyone because our system doesn’t work,” the governor added ambiguously.

Inverness resident Carlos Porrata was the resident ranger for Tomales Bay State Park when he retired in 2004. Carlos had been a state park ranger 28 years, including two in Samuel P. Taylor State Park and 24 years on Tomales Bay. Now a trustee of the Marin Community Foundation, Carlos wrote me, “I was very disappointed when I heard the news that Tomales Bay State Park was one of the state parks being considered for closure.”

“The Office of the Governor asked State Parks to come up with a plan proposal for a $17 million reduction for the 2008-09 fiscal year budget (a 10 percent cut). Most of the department’s budget is personnel, so the decision was made to eliminate positions by closing a series of parks.

“To choose which parks would be proposed for potential closure a set of filters (criteria) was developed. The filters were: 1) Can the park be physically closed to the public? 2) If the park were closed, would it save the amount needed? (In the case of Marin District, [the proposed closure] entails two permanent positions). 3) Closures would have to be spread around throughout the whole state.

“It should be emphasized that this is just a PROPOSAL and a lot of back and forth will soon start between the Legislature and the Governor’s Office. I do not think the [Marin] District has started conversations as to what closing Tomales Bay State Park would entail operationally or if there might be other possibilities to achieve the required [spending] cut.

A raft for swimmers at Tomales Bay State Park with Indian Beach in the distance.

“The closure of Tomales Bay State Park would certainly be a challenge. Although the entrance gate to Hearts Desire beach can be closed, we all know that the State Park beaches are easily accessible by boat and kayaks. Jepson Trailhead and the south boundary trailhead to Shell Beaches I and II are also easily accessible.

“I clearly remember having gone through this predicament in the early 1990s, and although a large number of positions were eliminated, park closures never materialized. A lot of [proposals] ended up being part of the process in the political dance between the Legislature and the Governor’s Office.

“If the closure of that jewel of the state parks were to become a reality, another big loss would be the Environmental Living Programs that are held at Indian Beach for fourth and fifth graders throughout the school year, a signature program for Marin District.

“The good news is that Tomales Bay State Park personnel would not loose their jobs; they would probably be reassigned to another one of the park units (e.g. Samuel P. Taylor), and two open positions would not be filled, achieving the savings needed.”

State Park maintenance worker Roberto Barajas on Sunday cuts up trees that fell against a Tomales Bay State Park building in the recent storms.

One of those who doubts whether much money can be saved by closing the state park is LeeRoy Brock of Point Reyes Station. A retired ranger at the neighboring Point Reyes National Seashore, LeeRoy was a ranger at Bandolier National Monument in New Mexico when it was temporarily closed two decades ago.

There was no way to keep the public off the land, he said, so federal employees were still needed to clean up litter, maintain facilities, and patrol the area. LeeRoy suspects the situation would be the same at Tomales Bay State Park. Like Carlos, LeeRoy said there are too many places to enter the park on trails or by boat to keep people out.

State facilities, such as those getting park-maintenance workers Roberto Barajas’ and Janet Tafoya’s attention after the last storm, will still need protection from the elements, not to mention vandals. But under the governor’s proposal, there would be no Hearts Desire’s entrance fees to help pay for the work.

As one current state park official told me, it’s possible the Point Reyes National Seashore would try to acquire Tomales Bay State Park if it closed. That would be a shame, he added, for it’s already being run “efficiently.”

“This week,” Carlos said, “I will be writing to State Senator Carole Migden and Assemblyman Jared Huffman, sharing my concerns and disappointment about the proposed closing of Tomales Bay State Park, or any other parks, for that matter.

“Without taking away from the importance of parks and trails, however, I am personally very upset about the proposed cuts to the health, welfare and education of so many poor and needy children and families in California. They will be devastated by the draconian cuts that will affect other state agencies while the governor is willing to sink a huge sum of money into building a new death-row facility. Go figure.”

Tomales Bay State Park is rich in Miwok Indian middens. Its beaches are sheltered from the prevailing wind. And it is geared to families, who can park near picnic tables and barbecues overlooking the bay.

How did the park come to be? “Most of the Tomales Bay area lay untouched until the late 1940s, when developers discovered its beauty and began to purchase beachfront lands,” notes the State Park website.

“Local residents, fearing that the beaches would be closed to public use, formed a committee to help secure the land for park purposes. The Marin Conservation League, various conservation and civic organizations, and the state purchased portions of the area. On Nov. 8, 1952, Tomales Bay State Park was dedicated and opened to the public.”

“State Park Property. All features protected. This is your heritage. Help Guard It…”

Yet after all the work that went into creating Tomales Bay State Park, the future of its land is again in doubt.

Old Christmas trees piled behind the Arthur E. Disterheft Public Safety Building in Point Reyes Station this week.

County firefighters each year encourage West Marin residents to drop off their old Christmas trees at firehouses. The trees are chipped and hauled off, eliminating the risk of dry trees accidentally catching fire around the house. I dropped my tree off at the Point Reyes Station firehouse Monday after calling ahead to make sure I could do so a day after the recycling program supposedly ended for the year. No problem, I was told.

Of course, old Christmas trees shed pine needles whenever they brush against something, so I wasn’t especially happy about hauling the tree in my car’s trunk. “Too bad you can’t just drag it behind your car,” my houseguest Linda Petersen said with a laugh.

I could imagine my route to the firehouse littered with Christmas tree branches and cited the State Vehicle Code, which says that when hauling stuff on a public roadway, you must make sure none of it ends up in the road, with two exceptions, one of which you may never have thought about.

As the Highway Patrol officer, whose patrolcar is seen here, later confirmed in detail, Section 23114 of the Vehicle Code provides: “A vehicle may not be driven or moved on any highway unless the vehicle is so constructed, covered, or loaded as to prevent any of its contents or load other than clear water or feathers from live birds from dropping, sifting, leaking, blowing, spilling, or otherwise escaping from the vehicle.”

This allows farmers to transport “livestock,” the CHP officer said. In short, if you’re allergic to feathers, it’s up to you not to tailgate the turkey truck.

Wild Turkeys at Dawn. Monday morning I was awakened by 37 wild turkeys gobbling outside my bedroom window. Transported by the sunrise, they dropped few feathers.

The non-native turkeys were introduced into West Marin in 1988 by a hunting club working with the State Department of Fish and Game. You can read that story at Posting 76. By now there are far more turkeys than turkey hunters, and their flocks have spread throughout West Marin.

Hunting and slaughtering animals are not for everyone, but for the edification of those inured to them, the Associated Press in 1875 reported on a get-rich-quick scheme for perpetual-motion farming then being advertised in Lacon, Illinois:

“Glorious Opportunity to Get Rich. We are starting a cat ranch in Lacon with 100,000 cats. Each cat will average 12 kittens a year. The cat skins will sell for 30 cents each. One hundred men can skin 5,000 cats a day. We figure a daily net profit of over $10,000. Now what shall we feed the cats? We will start a rat ranch next door with 1,000,000 rats. The rats will breed 12 times faster than the cats. So we will have four rats to feed each day to each cat. Now what shall we feed the rats? We will feed the rats the carcasses of the cats after they have been skinned. Now Get This! We feed the rats to the cats and the cats to the rats and get the cat skins for nothing.”

The advertisement not surprisingly turned out to be a hoax. The perpetrator was an Illinois editor named Willis B. Powell.

At the foot of steps climbing from my parking area to my cabin, a palm tree stands as a memorial to the late conservationist Margot Patterson Doss of Bolinas (1920-2003).

Margot was a San Francisco Chronicle outdoors columnist, a Bay Area-hikes docent on tv’s Evening Magazine, and an author of 14 books. She was also a member of the California Coastal Commission and a member of the Citizens Advisory Commission to the Golden Gate National Recreation Area (which she helped establish) and Point Reyes National Seashore.

The desert palm beside my steps had once been among several Margot was growing at her home. She gave it to me as as an ironic political statement because we shared a distrust of the non-native zealotry of a few folks in West Marin.

It seems more than coincidental, for example, that the once-liberal Sierra Club, which has become so anti-immigrant that white-supremacist members in 2004 made a run at taking over the national board, is also hostile to the hundreds of non-native species in the US.

The president of the Marin Group of the San Francisco Bay Chapter of the National Sierra Club is Gordon Bennett, a member of the National Seashore superintendent’s kitchen cabinet. As such, Bennett has become the loudest voice defending the nativistic policies of the Park Service on Point Reyes.

Ironically, non-native Roof rats, such as the one above, were in North America 400 years prior to the founding of the Sierra Club. And European starlings, such as the one below, have been making noise in the US longer than the organization. All three can be annoying, but the Republic will survive.

Conservationist J.L. Hudson, who runs a nonprofit seed bank in La Honda, on his website describes today’s nativistic zealots this way:

It is “ominous” that during Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich, the National Socialists (Nazi Party) had a program to rid the landscape of ‘foreign’ plants. An interesting paper, ‘Some Notes on the Mania for Native Plants in Germany’ by Gert Groening and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn (Landscape Journal, Vol. II, No. 2, 1992), details this history.

“The extension of the Nazi pseudoscience of racial purity to the natural world is chillingly identical to the modern anti-exotics agenda, down to the details of ‘genetic contamination.’

“With the current rise of racism, immigrant-scapegoating, and other noxious, unAmerican ideologies, we must be prepared to hold all those who are promoting the anti-exotics frenzy personally responsible for their part in legitimizing a pseudoscience which leads directly to the horrors we saw in the 1940’s.

“Clearly, ‘eco-fascist’ is not too strong a term to describe these people.”

Ask yourself: is Hudson overstating the zealotry? Then look at the next two photos.

A barely non-native cypress tree? John Sansing was superintendent of the Point Reyes National Seashore from its opening in 1965 until Supt. Don Neubacher succeeded him in 1994. About 40 years ago, Sansing had this Monterey cypress planted at the Abbott’s Lagoon trailhead to soften the stark, industrial appearance of its restrooms and parking lot.

Last summer, Supt. Neubacher had the cypress cut down, and the Park Service explained why in the Aug. 2 West Marin Citizen: “Many have noticed the removal of the lone Monterey cypress at the Abbotts Lagoon trailhead parking. It is a California native species but well out of its range and thus an exotic species for Point Reyes.

“The removal was to prevent additional seeding in an area of traditionally treeless native dunes, which support the snowy plover population, among other reasons.”

How bizarre! First, as botanists will tell you, relatively few of a cypress’ seeds are viable, and in any case cypress cones often don’t open for years, which is why there was only a “lone Monterey cypress” (according to the Park Service) at the parking lot for 40 years. Monterey cypress simply is not an invasive species, despite what National Seashore staff say.

Second, park staff claimed to have worried that ravens would roost in the trailhead cypress tree before flying off to eat snowy plover eggs and chicks at the beach. The plover nests, however, are more than a mile from the trailhead, and there are plenty of other trees in their vicinity.

Third, the diameter of the cypress tree was 4.5 feet in places, and cutting it down did not make for a more-traditional landscape. Just the opposite. Removal of the large tree left the trailhead’s starkly utilitarian restrooms as a prominent feature of the landscape, along with rows of vehicles in the parking lot.

A native Pacific tree frog enjoys perching on a non-native bamboo growing in a wine barrel on my deck.

Native blacktail deer and non-native housecats comfortably coexist hereabouts. The cats, both domestic and feral, do take a toll on birdlife, but the park isn’t about to start shooting cats.

Possums are native to the Deep South but not California although they’ve been in the Bay Area for a century. Tourists don’t take particular notice of possums, so the park leaves them alone even though possums eat native birds’ eggs, frogs, and berries.

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Red foxes, like Monterey cypress, are native to California, but here again the park considers them 75 miles or so out of range on Point Reyes. Supt. Neubacher, however, has yet to announce any fox hunts. Nor are the park’s non-native muskrats being trapped.

With innumerable non-native species in and on the edge of the Point Reyes National Seashore, which ones has the Point Reyes National Seashore chosen to eradicate?

As it did with the Monterey cypress at the Abbotts Lagoon trailhead, the Point Reyes National Seashore has killed hundreds of white fallow deer and spiral-antlered axis deer because they’re supposedly not part of the “traditional landscape.” (Photo by Janine Warner, founder of DigitalFamily.com)

In short, Point Reyes is being sacrificed to a park administrator whose personal prejudices are reflected in a capricious form of nativism. Supt. Sansing administered a park that had a place for the stately cypress tree, the axis and fallow deer, an oyster company in Drakes Estero. Supt. Neubacher is now reversing significant policies established by his predecessor. Is this going to go on forever? Will each new superintendent redecorate the park to suit his own taste?

People who work for or with the Point Reyes National Seashore occasionally claim there should be no non-native species in the park because it is not a “zoo” but a nature preserve. In fact, it’s neither.

When the land was being threatened by subdividing and logging, Congress created the park for the benefit of the surrounding urban population. And today, as the park reports, 70 percent of its 2 million annual visitors come from the nine-county Bay Area.

Nor is there any question that Congress intended that much of the park remain grazed pastures filled with non-native species, as a Park Service sign (above) near the cypress’ stump acknowledges.

October’s final weekend provided a reminder of why many of us have chosen to live in West Marin. With sunny skies Saturday and Sunday, temperatures were comfortable even along the Pacific and Tomales Bay. On Monday, the weather turned chilly, and fog still blanketed the coast on Tuesday and Wednesday. With Standard Time scheduled to begin Sunday and the shortest day of the year only six weeks off, the season of darkness will soon be upon us.

Barbecuing oysters beside Tomales Bay in Inverness, Molly Milner, who operates an oyster bar on the deck at Barnaby’s restaurant, held an end-of-the-season party Saturday, with oysters at half price. I alone ate a dozen. A folk-rock band entertained diners, some of whom were surprised when the bandleader urged them to join a heretofore-unheard-of cause: saving aberrant red variations of (normally black) Frisian horses in Europe.

It seemed to be a weekend for eating throughout West Marin. County and volunteer firefighters held a pancake breakfast in the Point Reyes Station firehouse Sunday morning to raise money for the West Marin Disaster Preparedness Council. In the foreground (from left): Donna Larkin of Inverness Park, Phillip McKee (back to camera), Tony Ragona of Point Reyes Station, and Heather Sundberg of Point Reyes Station.

Mike Meszaros, former chief of the Inverness Volunteer Fire Department, cooks eggs in the Point Reyes Station firehouse for Matt Gallagher of Point Reyes Station during the annual event.

Outside the pancake breakfast, firefighters tear apart a car to demonstrate how the Jaws of Life are used to free a victim trapped in a wreck. “Jaws of Life” (a trademark of Hale Products Inc.) is not just one single tool but a set of several types of piston-rod hydraulic tools, including cutters, spreaders and rams. In the background, a rescue basket hangs from a fire engine’s hoist.

While West Marin residents watched rescue demonstrations and ate pancakes at the Point Reyes Station firehouse, dozens of motorcyclists, enjoying the last Sunday of October, roared down Highway 1 a block away.

State Senator Carol Midgen (center) on Sunday afternoon lent her support to a crowd of more than 50 people, who were protesting the Point Reyes National Seashore’s beginning to kill off its fallow and axis deer herds. The park began shooting deer last month, along with giving contraceptive injections to some does. The shooting has temporarily stopped but is scheduled to resume in the spring. Midgen told the group that shooting deer to eliminate the herds is unacceptable to members of the public in this region. She offered to cut red tape with State Fish and Game to facilitate the additional use of contraception to control herd sizes.