blake
Life Member
From Randy Taylor:
Listed below are the thoughts from four individuals who attended the meeting. Four individuals that keep an open mind and gave their thoughts serious consideration before putting them on paper. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about the meeting and how the whole situation has been handled.
Thoughts about Tuesday Night CWD Meeting in Ottumwa
1. We need to keep the pressure on. There were legislators present that will support legislation.
2. Fairly obvious that pressure was been put on by executive branch of gov. to soft shoe around this issue.
3. Why were the professional people not at meeting ( state vet, deer biologist, Dr. Garner) many important questions could have been answered on the spot.
4. The gentleman there representing the Whitetail Breeders Assoc. made a comment that I found rather disturbing.
The CWD craze has been fueled by the media and CWD in the large scheme of things isn’t a big deal.
We are very obviously standing on different sides of the fence. He’s standing inside the fence worried about the breeders and high fence hunting operations and I’m standing outside the fence worried about the wild deer herd. Not to mention the economic impact this could have on the state.
5. It’s time to use DNR professional people to the best of their abilities and keep politics out of wildlife management.
6. The time has come for people to contact your legislators if you think this is an important issue. Contact them before the election and let them know just how important these deer issues are, both from a recreational and economic standpoint.
As far as I’m concerned, we should outlaw all of the game farms and shooting farms. Barring that, we should ask the legislators to:
* Owners should be bonded or insured to pay costs in event of CWD including depopulation and the inflated values placed on these deer. Other businesses carry insurance or are bonded. Why should license dollars be used to pay for this?
* Keep all captive animals inside a double fence.
* Owners of high fence operation need to pay much higher fee/permit.
* Zero transfer of animals from one captive herd to another.
* As CWD may take years to affect an animal, ensure that no animal is over 3 1/2 years old.
* Exact number of deer must be accounted for from year to year with identification tags staying with them.
* All facilities, existing and new, sign contract effective immediately and forward, to agree to measures in the existing joint DNR and IDALS plan in the event of CWD including depopulation within 60 days at the expense of the facility (bonded or insurance).
Interesting meeting. Lot of fired up folks. Pretty civil, but no love lost on either side. My observations—
No professional experts there (no state vet, Garner, Litchfield or Suchy) just Administrators.
They got called on it by several people and were backed into a corner – had to admit there was pressure from above.
Push for professional staff at all future meetings
I got a chance to talk with Legislators Gaskill and Hanson and made these points–more folks need to make them and to more legislators.
Why are the deer farms not required to be bonded to handle a situation like this financially?
Why (when we know the high transmissibility of CWD) is there no requirement for double fencing on all these areas?
Why is the sale/exchange of deer semen essentially unregulated (both Gaskill and Hanson seemed not to have a clue about that) when the potential exists to transmit CWD in bodily fluids?
Keys here are economics and constituents
What do they think the economic trade-off is for Iowa and local economies ($200M statewide economic benefit from wild deer harvest (and is broadly distributed in local economies) versus $$ ??? (much less) from the high fence operations that trickles into the hands of just a few owners)?
Did not say this but – the hunter constituents that vote for legislators will be much more liable to vote in favor of a legislator if they worked diligently to correct this problem, regulate the deer farms, and protect the herd.
For what it is worth……………….there should be a push to hold more public meetings regarding this in all the surrounding counties (all 3 places), and if there are public meetings held regarding EHD, this should be an “educational topic” at each of them.
Good points.
*Nobody did a Nikita Khrushchev. (Stood up and pounded their shoe on the table, think cold war and the UN)
*Most of the questions were fair and not inflammatory, there were a few however.
*The guys from the state were honest in saying there have what amounts to a gag order hanging over them. (Also a bad thing but their honesty on that point went a long way).
Bad Points:
*General mistrust of the DNR.
*The lady I was sitting next to is a neighbor of the game farm and said the fence wasn’t done even though one of the officials said it was.
*We are paying for some if not all of the fence and policing of the quarantine.
*The fence isn’t up to “code”.
*I’m still not sure of how many deer tested positive. There was something about 8 deer in Avoca but that kinda got lost as the night went on. Probably because it was in a different area of the state and they were all concerned about their own back yards, which is understandable.
*The breeders don’t think this is any kind of a big deal.
*The plan was in place but not followed. Why? Because money talks and what is right walks. This just reinforces that if I ever get in trouble I’m gonna lawyer up and deny deny deny and obfuscate as much as possible until the storm has blown over. Like you said though we have to keep the storm blowing until the legislature convenes. We kind of have a smoking gun here and can make some inroads into getting deer breading and high fence operations banned but it isn’t like the asbestos industry where they had irrefutable evidence that CWD causes harm to humans. We can say that CWD takes money away from the state in any number of ways but the breeders and high fence operators will say they add income to the state. Let me say it another way, in the whole scheme of things CWD in a few captive deer to the members of the legislature is no big deal. What we have to do is prove the loss of revenue to the state from positive CWD tests will outweigh what the breeders and high fence operations bring in. Remember it’s about money not what is right. With a republican governor it is business first everything else is second.
Listed below are the thoughts from four individuals who attended the meeting. Four individuals that keep an open mind and gave their thoughts serious consideration before putting them on paper. I'll let you draw your own conclusions about the meeting and how the whole situation has been handled.
Thoughts about Tuesday Night CWD Meeting in Ottumwa
1. We need to keep the pressure on. There were legislators present that will support legislation.
2. Fairly obvious that pressure was been put on by executive branch of gov. to soft shoe around this issue.
3. Why were the professional people not at meeting ( state vet, deer biologist, Dr. Garner) many important questions could have been answered on the spot.
4. The gentleman there representing the Whitetail Breeders Assoc. made a comment that I found rather disturbing.
The CWD craze has been fueled by the media and CWD in the large scheme of things isn’t a big deal.
We are very obviously standing on different sides of the fence. He’s standing inside the fence worried about the breeders and high fence hunting operations and I’m standing outside the fence worried about the wild deer herd. Not to mention the economic impact this could have on the state.
5. It’s time to use DNR professional people to the best of their abilities and keep politics out of wildlife management.
6. The time has come for people to contact your legislators if you think this is an important issue. Contact them before the election and let them know just how important these deer issues are, both from a recreational and economic standpoint.
As far as I’m concerned, we should outlaw all of the game farms and shooting farms. Barring that, we should ask the legislators to:
* Owners should be bonded or insured to pay costs in event of CWD including depopulation and the inflated values placed on these deer. Other businesses carry insurance or are bonded. Why should license dollars be used to pay for this?
* Keep all captive animals inside a double fence.
* Owners of high fence operation need to pay much higher fee/permit.
* Zero transfer of animals from one captive herd to another.
* As CWD may take years to affect an animal, ensure that no animal is over 3 1/2 years old.
* Exact number of deer must be accounted for from year to year with identification tags staying with them.
* All facilities, existing and new, sign contract effective immediately and forward, to agree to measures in the existing joint DNR and IDALS plan in the event of CWD including depopulation within 60 days at the expense of the facility (bonded or insurance).
Interesting meeting. Lot of fired up folks. Pretty civil, but no love lost on either side. My observations—
No professional experts there (no state vet, Garner, Litchfield or Suchy) just Administrators.
They got called on it by several people and were backed into a corner – had to admit there was pressure from above.
Push for professional staff at all future meetings
I got a chance to talk with Legislators Gaskill and Hanson and made these points–more folks need to make them and to more legislators.
Why are the deer farms not required to be bonded to handle a situation like this financially?
Why (when we know the high transmissibility of CWD) is there no requirement for double fencing on all these areas?
Why is the sale/exchange of deer semen essentially unregulated (both Gaskill and Hanson seemed not to have a clue about that) when the potential exists to transmit CWD in bodily fluids?
Keys here are economics and constituents
What do they think the economic trade-off is for Iowa and local economies ($200M statewide economic benefit from wild deer harvest (and is broadly distributed in local economies) versus $$ ??? (much less) from the high fence operations that trickles into the hands of just a few owners)?
Did not say this but – the hunter constituents that vote for legislators will be much more liable to vote in favor of a legislator if they worked diligently to correct this problem, regulate the deer farms, and protect the herd.
For what it is worth……………….there should be a push to hold more public meetings regarding this in all the surrounding counties (all 3 places), and if there are public meetings held regarding EHD, this should be an “educational topic” at each of them.
Good points.
*Nobody did a Nikita Khrushchev. (Stood up and pounded their shoe on the table, think cold war and the UN)
*Most of the questions were fair and not inflammatory, there were a few however.
*The guys from the state were honest in saying there have what amounts to a gag order hanging over them. (Also a bad thing but their honesty on that point went a long way).
Bad Points:
*General mistrust of the DNR.
*The lady I was sitting next to is a neighbor of the game farm and said the fence wasn’t done even though one of the officials said it was.
*We are paying for some if not all of the fence and policing of the quarantine.
*The fence isn’t up to “code”.
*I’m still not sure of how many deer tested positive. There was something about 8 deer in Avoca but that kinda got lost as the night went on. Probably because it was in a different area of the state and they were all concerned about their own back yards, which is understandable.
*The breeders don’t think this is any kind of a big deal.
*The plan was in place but not followed. Why? Because money talks and what is right walks. This just reinforces that if I ever get in trouble I’m gonna lawyer up and deny deny deny and obfuscate as much as possible until the storm has blown over. Like you said though we have to keep the storm blowing until the legislature convenes. We kind of have a smoking gun here and can make some inroads into getting deer breading and high fence operations banned but it isn’t like the asbestos industry where they had irrefutable evidence that CWD causes harm to humans. We can say that CWD takes money away from the state in any number of ways but the breeders and high fence operators will say they add income to the state. Let me say it another way, in the whole scheme of things CWD in a few captive deer to the members of the legislature is no big deal. What we have to do is prove the loss of revenue to the state from positive CWD tests will outweigh what the breeders and high fence operations bring in. Remember it’s about money not what is right. With a republican governor it is business first everything else is second.
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