Taking a page from embarrassment-proof PETA, Bite Club of KC is using blood and guts to make the point that using rifles and crossbows to control the deer population at Greater Shawnee Mission Park is barbaric.
The group's Web site features images of deer in various stages of conquest and a dog that's been carved up and served on a plate. Deer hunters are bluntly characterized as "fucking murderers."
Staff at the Johnson County Parks and Recreation Department came up with a plan to control the park's deer population with marksmen. Parks officials want to reduce the number of deer per square mile from 200 to 50. Archers will conduct a second "harvest" this fall, if needed.
Parks officials say the deer population is eight times greater than
what's healthy. Deer consume the forest "understory," forcing
other creatures to scramble and inviting invasive plant species.
Bite Club members are not convinced the park is overrun with deer. They say the parks department is captive to hunters, developers and people who freak out about Lyme disease.
Anita Colman, a member of Bite Club, says parks officials have been reluctant to explore less blood-splattering techniques, such as putting birth control in feed or allowing the deer to exit the park via migration corridors. "They don't really have a way out," Colman says.
Wednesday at 6 p.m, Bite Club will protest the massacre/harvest at the parks department's administration building on Renner Road in Shawnee.
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