It's hard to disagree with the Northwestern's position in today's editorial that it's time to move on from dogs and deer to more pressing city matters. Still, the editorial contains two very puzzling statements: "The city has had a robust and civil debate on how to best deal with the urban deer problem. All sides were heard."
Huh??
When exactly did that "robust debate" take place? Here's the "debate" that has taken place so far:
*On February 12, 2008, seven citizens spoke to the Common Council during "citizen statements" to talk about their concerns with deer in their yards. No debate took place.
*On March 25, 2008 the City Council had a workshop on urban deer. You can see it here (it starts at around the 1 hour, 45 minute mark). I believe 16 citizens spoke at the workshop, with all but two in favor of lethal methods to handle the deer population. Perhaps there could have been a robust debate at the workshop had the Council and/or administration done a better job of actively seeking out other points of view on the matter. We didn't, and so there certainly was not a "robust debate" at the workshop. Minutes of meetings of the deer committee chaired by Police Chief Greuel and City Attorney Lorenson do not indicate the presence of opponents to deer culling--so no "robust debate" there either.
*On April 22, 2008 the Council had before it the first reading of an ordinance to ban the feeding of deer. There was no debate.
*On May 13th, 2008 the Council passed a resolution to adopt the "urban deer management program" and an ordinance prohibiting the feeding of deer. I don't believe any citizens showed up to speak on either item. No robust debate.
*On December 23, 2008 the Council had before it the first reading of an ordinance that would amend the city's firearms laws so as to allow for a deer kill. Whereas the March 25th workshop was mostly one-sided in favor of culling, on December 23rd the citizen speakers were mostly opposed to culling. There was no "robust debate."
So contrary to the Northwestern's editorial, the problem with the urban deer issue is not there has already been robust debate; rather, up to this point there has been NO DEBATE. That's why the issue is now so contentious. Had the Council, the City Administration, and (yes) the Northwestern done more to ensure that all voices were heard in March, this issue would have played out much differently.
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3 comments:
There was a fairly robust debate//discussion going the the ONW website. But not one involving the city council.
Tony wrote:
"It's hard to disagree with the Northwestern's position in today's editorial that it's time to move on from dogs and deer to more pressing city matters."
IMHO, there is a compelling moral argument that nonhuman animal welfare (not necessarily dogs and deer, in particular) is one of the most important moral issues of our day, because there is an enormous amount of unjustifiable nonhuman suffering; that is, nonhuman suffering caused by practices that produce relatively minor human welfare benefits. An unarticulated but deeply held common sense intuition along those lines may explain the moral indignation that is driving animal issues to the fore. See:
The Animal Rights Library
animal-rights-library.com
Based on the surveys conducted, I would not have drawn the same conclusions as given during the urban deer workshop. 75% were not concerned and 77% either didn't think there should be action or had no opinion on it. Yet they think there should be culling because those that felt that nothing should be done had no damage done to their property.
A real question here are how many deer are really there? It looks like the density could be quite high given the available habitat, or rather normal.
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