HuntingNet.com Forums - Anti-Hunter News Release and Letter

This is what you have to look forward to from the results of not having a more united front of the Pennsylvania hunters.

Blame can be thrown any direction you want to throw it but that isn’t what will change the future. Working together to preserve both the sport and the absolute necessity of hunters and trappers as the best possible wildlife management tools for the future is all that can hold the
unknowledgeable antis at bay.

They are will organized, well funded and wise enough to use a united front. Are today’s hunters still able to muster that wisdom as they did in the past?

And now the News Release and Letter from the Anti-hunters.

January 28, 2009

PRESS RELEASE

People throughout the US and in PA are becoming aware of the great increase
in killing. The economic situation is painful: to lose one's job, one's
home, one's future. But to hold your child in your arms, killed from a
school shooting or collateral damage from an urban driveby, or to be or have
a family member killed in rural America, where the FBI says killings are
increasing substantially, is worse.

The culture glorifying killing must be ended. And in PA it starts with
glorifying killing by the people who just like to kill things (their words)
for recreation. They call it the "great tradition of hunting" and say if
they don't teach it to their kids by the time the kids are 8, the kids don't
want to participate.

But this is not a great tradition. Hunting is what you do for your car keys.
When you find them, you don't gleefully and with high-tech weapons kill them
for fun. It is killing for fun.

It is a perversion of the PA constitution which gives the natural resources
of PA including wildlife to all the people and of the Game Code which
entrusts the management of the wildlife to the Game Commission, not to breed
more deer and other wildlife for killers to kill for fun but to conserve and
maintain them.

Groups and individuals across PA are coming more and more to an awareness of
the need to bring the preservation of our wildlife back to the principles of
the great conservationists llike Teddy Roosevelt and to the principles of
love and living with others so needed in this twenty-first century, here at
home and around the world.

PA Wildlife Alliance has asked Gov Rendell and the senators of PA to
recognize the need to return to preservation principles of our natural
resources in the letter below and shall begin to talk with them about
correcting the perversion of the Game Commission. They will be speaking with
the Senate and House Game Committees; they will be speaking to parents,
decent people, and school children through this year, 2009, the year of the
deer.

Please help us and carry the word to the people. Faith, hope, and love - and
the greatest of these is love - not killing.

PA Wildlife Alliance

PA WILDLIFE ALLIANCE

20 Walker Road

Macungie PA 18062

January 19, 2009

Dear Governor Rendell and Senators of Pennsylvania,

In May of 2007 the killing of defenseless animals for recreation was brought
to our attention when the executive of Lehigh County signed an agreement
with the Pennsylvania Game Commission to permit killing deer and wild turkey
on the North Range of the Trexler Game Preserve, a fenced and posted animal
sanctuary General Trexler created in 1906 and willed to Lehigh County. We
were horrified by this destruction of a 100-year-old animal sanctuary.

When we went to the Game Commission website to get information, we were more
horrified by the membership of the Game Commission Board (quotes are from
Game Commission abstracts):

Roxanne Palone: "lifelong [killing animals for recreation] enthusiast" MA forest management, West Virginia University

Russell Schleiden: "active [killer of animals for recreation] since age 12"

Greg Isabella: "[killer of animals for recreation] for 30 years"

Tom Boop: "lifelong [killer of animals for recreation]"

Dan Hill: "lifelong active [killer of animals for recreation]"

Dave Shreffler: member of clubs for killing animals for recreation forestry manager, Maryland Forestry Association

James Delaney: "avid [killer of animals for recreation] of 32 years"

Ronald Weaner: "lifelong [killer of animals for recreation]" teaching emphasis on forestry
farmer

This membership is in contravention of the Pennsylvania constitution, which
states:

Sec 27: The people have a right . . . to the preservation of the natural, scenic, historic
and esthetic values of the environment. Pennsylvania's public natural resources are
the common property of all the people, including generations yet to come. As trustee
of these resources, the Commonwealth shall conserve and maintain them for the benefit
of all the people. [our emphases] and of the Pennsylvania Game and Wildlife Code, which states:

103.a. The ownership, jurisdiction over and control of game or wildllife is
vested in the commission.

b. The commission shall utilize hunting and trapping as methods of
effecting necessary management of game, furbearer and wildlife populations.
[our emphases]
The animals belong to all the people. Killing animals for recreation does
not conserve or maintain them for all the people and, with knowledge, is
rarely if ever necessary for their management.

Appointing recreational killers to the board charged with managing wildlife
populations is a perversion of the purpose of the Game Commission. Instead
of the Game Commission managing wildlife populations to conserve and
maintain them for the benefit of all the people, the board made up of avid
lifelong killers for recreation is managing wildlife for the recreation of a
small group of people. The Game Commission puts in food plots and improves
habitat for deer to provide more deer each year for killers to have to kill
for recreation. This is not conserving or maintaining wildlife, and it is
grossly inhumane and barbaric in the civilization of the twenty-first
century. You do not raise animals to kill for fun.

"There are too many deer" has been used as an excuse for the killing. But
the Unified Sportsmen of Pennsylvania are suing the Game Commission for not
providing them enough deer to kill for fun. Advisory Councils for the Game
Commission in 24 of the 25 GC Wildlife Management Units have said there are
too few deer.

You are responsibile for appointing or approving Game Commission Board
members, with three appointments out of eight members to be made now. It is
vitally important that you appoint wildlife specialists, conservation biologists, who have knowledge and attitude to conserve and maintain wildlife for the benefit of all the people.

Game commissions in states were originally established¯in Pennsylvania in
1895¯at the urging of the great conservationists of the turn of the last
century like Teddy Roosevelt. Game officers were originally called animal
protectors. It seems probable that the perversion of the ideal of conserving
wildlife is due to funding the Game Commission with hunting license fees
(and logging).

The commission should be funded by general funds. But now in a time of great
economic problems, the funding to achieve its conervation purpose can be
initiated in various ways. We give some examples; thought should produce
others. The public can contribute if a line is added to the state income tax
return where individuals can donate $20 or more for the support of the
commission. Another wildlife license plate can be instituted. The state game
lands (1.4 million acres), deeded to the PA Commonwealth to be used by the
commission, can and should be opened, developed, and used as state parks for
all the people. A moderate entrance fee can be charged to support the
commission and maintain these parks.

As development continues in Pennsylvania, wildlife will be more pressed by
human incursion. We do not want to deprive our descendents of enjoying the
soul-restoring esthetic values of land and wildlife. And we want to provide
a place for wildlife to continue to exist and to be managed knowledgably and
humanely, not killed or wounded and left to die for the recreation of a few.

We note that in 2003 you created by executive order an Advisory Council for
[Killling] and Conservation to make recommendations to you for appointments
to the Game Commission Board. That is a contradiction in itself: Killing is
in no way or ever conservation. Conservation is bandied about to make
killing sound good and enable it to continue for the fun of a small avid
group. Killing is not good, ever. If, after scientific consideration of
problems and how to deal with them by wildlife biologists, killing is a
necessity, it should be done with sorrow, not avid recreation.

You stated in announcing the council that it was to provide the "best
possible advice on [killing]." The head advisor you appointed to be an
"advocate for [killers] and conservationists" is also proud to be another
"lifelong [killer]" (in the site biography). The council tells us applicants
to the Game Commission Board are evaluated on the basis of their support for
killing animals.

Managing the wildlife of Pennsylvania and the Game Commission's role in
doing so are important for their conservation and maintenance for all the
people. We submit you, governor and senators, must immediately and carefully
consider and correct the perversion of this purpose of the Pennsylvania
constitution and of the great conservationists and appoint and approve
members to the Game Commission Board based on their qualifications for
managing wildlife to conserve and maintain them for all the people of
Pennsylvania and generations yet to come as development continues and
diminishes wildlands - conservation biologists, not people to raise animals
for avid killers to kill for recreation.

Governor Rendell, we herewith request a meeting with you for our board to
discuss such qualifications for appointment to the Game Commission Board and
to present suggestions of wildlife conservationists for appointment.

Thank you for your consideration and we respectfully request a reply as soon
as possible.

Sincerely,

Carol A. Loomis

Carol A. Loomis, Secretary

PA Wildlife Alliance, with the support of but not limited to the following
organizations and their membership throughout Pennsylvania:

Citizens Task Force on the Trexler Game Preserve

Preserve the Preserve

Freedom for Animals

Friends of the Game Preserve

Global Wildlife Alliance Hillside SPCA, Pottsville, PA

Humane League of Philadelphia

Lehigh Gap Nature Center

Lehigh Valley Animal Rights Coalition

Make Peace with Animals

MidAtlantic Animal Rights Coalition

Mobilization for Animals Pennsylvania

New Hope for Deer

Nonlethal Options for Animals

Preserve the Preserve

Public Eye: Artists for Animals

Reach Out for Animal Rights

Students for Animal Protection

Tyler Park Woods

Wildlife Friends

Yardley Park Deer