Will the S.M. Park deer hunt become an annual event?
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Reporter's Notebook
In the fiery debate over how to manage the deer in Shawnee Mission Park, Randy Knight heard it all.
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| Nicole Reinertson |
| Randy Knight, community relations manager for JoCo parks |
Another resident proposed trucking in unseemly amounts of lion manure from the Kansas City Zoo, spreading it around Shawnee Mission Park and repelling the deer with the stench of their predators' poop.
Most famously, the members of Bite Club of KC, submitted the concept of a Deer Auto-Assembler, which would create a deer preserve, possibly with an observation tower for animal-loving tourists.
Knight, community relations manager for the Johnson County Park and Recreation District, listened to them all. Personally, he hoped park officials would find a way to handle the deer without killing them. When the district decided the only viable option was a harvest with sharpshooters and bow hunters, Knight took plenty of abuse -- one angry resident accused him of being an evil Republican on par with former vice president Dick Cheney.
But the outrage and the bloodshed might be a one-year affair.
Once the herd is scaled back to a level that the landscape can sustain, Knight says, the district will try to keep the deer in check without sharpshooters and bow hunters. "Our sincere hope is we can move forward and manage the herd in new ways and better ways," he says.
That hope is written into the district's official management plan, which dictates that "the District's ongoing deer management efforts include continued consideration of non-lethal management methods." That could mean partnering with scientists to conduct research on contraceptives, Knight says. It could mean taking residents up on their offers to raise money to pay for birth control, if the costs exceeds the county's budget, he adds.
Despite his aggressive tactics, Jason Miller, founder of Bite Club, says he's still willing to work with the district. In fact, Knight reached out to Bite Club this summer, as possible collaborators. "I said, 'I don't see us working together at this point, but if that's true about non-lethal options, maybe we will work together some day,'" Miller says.
In the meantime, Bite Club is moving up the political hierarchy.
In late September, Miller appeared on a Canadian radio show with another anti-hunting activist, Lane Ferrante, who has been fighting deer hunts on public land in Solon, Ohio, for years. But that kind of opposition is the short term battle, she said. The long-range war requires wider political pressure. To change policy on the state level, Ferrante founded the League of Humane Voters of Ohio, which works to elect animal friendly politicians and keeps track of legislators once in office.
Miller says he wants to create a similar organization in Kansas City. Susan Bennett is already on board. Bennett was the first activist to agitate against the deer harvest. She started an online petition and created a YouTube channel. A legal assistant for 35 years, she started monitoring state legislation in Topeka, too.
One of the bills that caught her attention during the 2009 session was authored by Rep. Anthony Brown. The Eudora Republican's measure would "provide for a season for archery ... for hunting deer within the boundaries of Shawnee Mission Park." The Johnson County Park and Recreation District, then in the middle of studying its deer dilemma, opposed the bill and its director Michael Meadors testified against it.
Now that the hunt is on, Brown hopes such legislation won't be necessary next session.
"We'll wait to see what the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks says about the population, and if the health of that population can be maintained," he says.
Either way, Brown will have to watch his back for Bite Clubbers. The League of Humane Voters, Bennett says, will keep track of future bills and make sure the newly mobilized ranks of animal supporters know when to pick up the phone or drive out to Topeka. More importantly, Bennett emphasizes, the voting block will actively campaign to get animal-lovers elected to office.
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