AR-News: "DEER LADY" HAULED OFF TO JAIL - LETTERS NEEDED

[PeterMuller]

please cross-post

 
<http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-ny--deerlady0615jun15,0,225143
9.story?coll=ny-ap-regional-wire>
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-ny--deerlady0615jun15,0,2251439
.story?coll=ny-ap-regional-wire

Here's the Buffalo News, I'm not quoted, but did

interview for follow up this morning. They'll be

friendly to a letter.
<http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20040616/1028136.asp>
http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial/20040616/1028136.asp

[Model letter

email to: LettertoEditor at Buffnews.com  CheektowagaTimes at aol.com]

 

In Cheektowaga on June 15 a petite grandmother was hauled, handcuffed, off
to jail for feeding deer. Under a Department of Environmental Conservation
rule, Anita Depczynski and thousands of other friends of wildlife are now
criminals. The DEC rule is so broad that folks feeding birds in public parks
and even gardeners who compost could run afoul of the DEC. 

 

 

Anita's sentencing is a travesty. The judge in Cheektowaga, Ronald Kmiotek,
could have stood up to the DEC himself and set Anita free. Now that
privilege goes to Judge Shirley Troutman in the appeal. She'll have plenty
of grounds to throw out the DEC rule: regulatory overreach, misunderstanding
of science on chronic wasting disease, selective enforcement or more.

 

Aside from exposing DEC excess and incompetence, Anita's case reveals how
ugly things can get when people who stand to profit from development find
wildlife in the way. Cheektowaga and other towns must begin to consider the
fate of wildlife. 

 

Other possible talking points:

 

.  The Stiglemeier Park deer are a stranded herd that needs a safe, humane
and sustainable management policy.

 

.  The DEC deer feeding ban comes down hard on ordinary people, but exempts
places like venison farms, roadside zoos and canned hunts that are far more
likely to be the start of a CWD outbreak.

 

.  The DEC deer feed ban ignores the best science on CWD. The rule acts as
if it is a bacterial or viral infection that may spread through casual
contact when it is recognized as a prion disease (a transmissible spongiform
encephalopathy [TSE] like mad cow).

 

.  Anita was at first singled out for prosecution, but later when claims of
selective enforcement became a concern, two older gentlemen with birdseed
were cited. Rather than deflecting attention from the selective enforcement
concern, this heightens the concerns regarding how overreaching the
regulation is. Could a gardener with a compost pile be cited?

 

.  The DEC ignored the deer of Stiglemeier Park for decades as development
surrounded them and cut them off from normal range. Suddenly, with the deer
feed ban in place and new pressure for development in the area the DEC moves
in to cite people for feeding deer. Ignoring the development impacts on the
deer was negligent and enforcing the feeding ban is capricious.

 

.  A DA in Franklin County found the DEC regulation so overbroad and poorly
written that he threw out a citation against a man there. Cheektowaga should
have done

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