AR-News: OH - Unwitting deer center of debate

[Rob Russell]

The house sponsor testimony is Wednesday, April 28th in Room 116 at 8:30 am. The house bill (HB-462) is assigned to Agriculture & Natural Resources.

The senate bill(SB-227) is assigned to Energy, Natural Resources & Environment. 

Unwitting deer center of debate 
Proposed legislation is likely to fire up contraception-culling fight 
Sunday, April 25, 2004
Dave Golowenski 
FOR THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH 

Whether a brawl eventually breaks out remains to be seen, but a bill introduced into the Ohio General Assembly has the makings of a melee. 

The issue of whether contraceptives should be effectively outlawed as means of controlling deer populations appears to pit pro- and anti-hunting advocates against one another and involves at least a few wildlife managers. 

In a more or less neutral corner stands a key player, the Ohio Division of Wildlife. Legislation introduced days ago in the Ohio House (HB-462) by Rep. Jimmy Stewart (R-Athens) and in the upper chamber (SB-227) by Sen. Lynn Wachtmann (R-Napoleon) would impinge upon the wildlife chief's ability to issue permits to local entities, such as municipalities and parks, allowing the use of contraceptives to help control runaway deer populations. 

"Our official position right now is that we're evaluating," said Dave Risley, the division's administrator of wildlife management and research. "As I look through (the bill), it adds a few extra parameters." 

In fact, those extra parameters appear to eliminate for the foreseeable future any choice about the use of deer contraceptives anywhere in the state. 

Cutting back 


Currently, the most widely used contraceptive, known as PZP, is injected in captured deer by syringe. PZP is permitted for limited use as an "investigational" drug by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. However, the bills introduced by Stewart and Wachtmann state that contraceptives used to manage deer populations must already be approved for general use by the FDA. 

And as far as federal approval, "nothing is legal right now," Risley said. 

Rob Sexton, a lobbyist for the Columbus-based U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance, a hunting rights group, acknowledged that his organization helped craft the Ohio bill as part of a state-by-state effort to clip the widening use of contraceptives. At last count, he said, 15 projects were operating or completed. 

The sportsmen's alliance, Sexton said, sees no reason that controlled hunting and sharpshooting, which are proven, safe and effective means of controlling herd size, need to be supplemented or replaced in any situation or setting. 

Human health concerns 


The use of contraceptives, Sexton said, is little more than a costly way for local governments to placate critics of culling, many of whom oppose hunting or any killing of animals and instead support chemical birth prevention for population control. Further, the fact that no contraceptive has FDA approval indicates that the use of chemicals can't be assumed safe should a treated deer, which conceivably might wander off the reservation and into a hunter's sights, end up on a dinner plate. 

"The fact that a drug is experimental means it's not agreed that it's safe for people," Sexton said. "These animals die. So what happens if a dog comes along and starts eating a carcass? Or a coyote?" 

To date, few people seem as concerned as the sportsman's alliance about the public health effects of PZP, a protein-based drug made from pigs that prevents pregnancy in deer by activating the doe's immune system to block sperm from fertilizing an egg. 

At least one reason is that animals treated with PZP at parks in the Cleveland or Columbus areas received ear tags that warn potential consumers not to eat the meat, said John O'Meara, executive director of the Franklin County Metro Parks. As Sexton pointed out, such ear tags can fall off. Nonetheless, O'Meara said he considered the risk negligible that a resident park animal might wander far enough from its base, say, Sharon Woods, to reach hunted territory. 

In any event, contraceptives were taken away from the Metro Parks this year, coincidental with the shaping of the contraceptive-banning bill, when the wildlife division declined to issue a permit for their further use after years of granting approval. 

"We're very disappointed," O'Meara said. "We think it's a good wildlife-management tool. It's not perfect, but it is effective." 

Population explosion 


Unable to continue their contraceptive program, O'Meara said that park administrators will have little choice but to increase the shooting of deer, a control measure already in place, before the population inevitably climbs and again threatens park flora, as happened at Sharon Woods in the 1990s. 

Exactly why the wildlife division shut down the contraceptive program is a little difficult to pin down, O'Meara said. The offered reason was connected to the experimental designation of a program that has been ongoing for about nine years. 

"I thought it was becoming operational rather than experimental," Risley said, explaining that continuing the program didn't appear to be adding significant knowledge about contraceptive use. In addition, the Metro Parks was using a formulation of PZP that has since been updated. 

That leaves a single area in the Cleveland Metroparks as the lone setting for use of contraceptives in Ohio. The 1-square-mile project at the Ohio and Erie Canal section is slated to run several years before it must petition to continue. A few other metropolitan parks in Ohio employ culling only. 

Echoing a sentiment expressed by O'Meara, Dan Petit, the manager of research for the Cleveland parks, said he would rue having legislators decide what kind of controls local governments can use to deal with their deer problems. 

"It takes that possible option out of the hand of local managers," he said. 

While Petit acknowledged that the Humane Society of the United States supports research on the use of PZP, he said Cleveland Metroparks spends its own money for the program without any subsidies. The Sharon Woods program also used its own funds, said Larry Peck, assistant director of Metro Parks. Both men said the use of PZP shouldn't be construed as support for the goals of the humane society. 

Critics of contraceptives, such as the U.S. Sportsmen's Alliance, point out that costs of administering PZP can be high - up to and even exceeding $2,000 per dose - and therefore is wasteful of tax money. However, Petit said costs of culling are high because Cleveland parks get so many human visitors that securing an area to shoot deer can't be accomplished on the cheap. 

A numbers game 


Culling in Sharon Woods costs less than applying contraceptives but not significantly so, O'Meara said, and he wondered where critics got their expense data. 

"Nobody asked us," he said. 

Sexton sent out surveys to administrators of the 15 projects and received 10 replies. Through May 2002, the 10 projects had spent $1.1 million treating 438 deer at an average cost of $2,283.11. 

A program's start-up costs generally are higher, O'Meara said, but there has been a hope that continued experimentation with contraceptives might lead to the development of long-lasting drugs. Such drugs would shrink the cost considerably by requiring shots once every three or four years instead of annually. 

However, the Stewart-Wachtmann bills would appear to take such experimentation, at least in Ohio, out of the real-world conditions - unique, confined urban areas - in which contraceptives are known to hold down deer numbers. Sexton said testing, for no other reason than public safety, should be restricted to animals in zoos and in pens. 

Those in favor of contraceptives point out that the drugs have no application to free-ranging deer, whose numbers all except ardent "antis" agree can best be controlled by hunting. 

Peck emphasized that contraception seems to be useful only on "semi-isolated" herds such as at Sharon Woods and aren't even worth trying at parks such as Highbanks or Slate Run, where deer come and go. He said he's not aware of efforts to create a contraceptive for controlling large-scale deer populations as a substitute for hunting. 

A first round of hearings on the measures, Sexton said, might not be more than a few weeks away. 


outdoors at dispatch.com 




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