New Woodburn Community School

SPECIAL TO NEW WOODBURN COMMUNITY SCHOOL

 Bow-And-Arrow-Killing City Deer in Morgantown, West Virginia

by Victor Rip

What’s next? Trapping and cooking your neighbor’s dog for a holiday feast?  Bow and arrow shooting is the most brutal and stupid way imaginable to attempt to control urban deer populations. The West Virginia DNR is to blame for the deer population. The DNR has gone wild and continues to pump up the deer population far beyond ecological levels because the DNR makes big money off the sale of hunting licenses.

But first: what is this, the 9th century both morally and technologically?

In one of our special featured links, most brutal and stupid, The Humane Society explains the brutality of bow and arrow killing, as do Minnesota city officials and schoolchildren who have witnessed deer walking around with arrows stuck through their heads.

Bow and arrow killing gets an A for brutality and an F for effectiveness. Sharpshooter bullet killing, while brutal, if somewhat less so, at least would be more effective in the short term, if done scientifically, though both methods are entirely ineffective in the long term.

Morgantown City Council opted for the cheapest, most brutal, and basically phony solution, unlike say the city of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and many other towns and cities which have had the good sense to reject a city bowhunt that:

“would have to kill a lot of animals and be repeated, and wounded animals might need to be tracked onto private property. ‘We do not believe an urban hunt is a viable option for the town,’ says the memo from leaders of the police, public works, and parks and recreation departments. Instead, they recommend the town provide information to residents who want to protect their gardens.”

Dogs that poop a lot around gardens help no little bit. And there are plenty of other solutions, as explained below.

So much for the cheap shoot-first, appearances-over-substance decision of Morgantown City Council.

And by the way, anyone who has ever visited or lived in a town that actually is flooded with deer, particularly out west, and where the people live with the deer and therefore drive more slowly and safely, would consider the idea that Morgantown has a huge amount of deer to be a joke.

All that said, it wouldn’t hurt to reduce the deer population gradually, so how should the city begin to do so in a way that is actually effective and compassionate?

The City of Morgantown, along with cities and counties all across West Virginia, should start by suing the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources for violation of WV Code 20-2-1. The DNR created the big deer population in the first place and is responsible for it. Not only did the DNR explode upward the deer population, it insists on continuing to do so.

The only way to effectively and humanely control city deer populations in Morgantown and elsewhere is to control the state deer population. The DNR refuses. So as the cities and counties sue the DNR, the state legislature should pass further wildlife laws to get the DNR under real control. The DNR deer population policies harm farmers, gardeners, drivers, and the deer themselves, as our next featured link, “Negative Impacts of High Deer Population [In West Virginia],” explains in detail.

The idiotic DNR deer policies set up city governments to then do stupid and brutal things, such as bow-and-arrow-killing deer.

It’s long since time to put the Morgantown City Council deer hunt into badly needed context. The deer population has been stupidly and brutally confronted because unpopular but cheap, simpleton, kill-first measures are pushed in a vacuum of understanding.

The 1995 state deer report linked above finds that “The increase in the deer herd is attributable in part to the primary objectives of DNR: increasing the deer population to a level that will support the harvesting of 183,000 per year by the year 2000. This will require a deer population of 40 deer per square mile” even though “generally accepted scientific research has found that deer in populations over 20 deer per square mile harms forests…” 

Such artificially inflated (DNRtificially inflated) deer populations also damage habitat, wildlife, vegetation, and the non-hunting economy (farming & forestry), while increasing traffic accidents (especially in rural areas) and angering gardeners and causing city councils to go all stupid and brutal.

The DNR refuses to accept its responsibility: “The DNR has not set a threshold defining when deer populations have become too high. Current deer populations are estimated by the DNR at 10 to 90 deer per square mile, with an average of 34.1…. [Though] studies indicate that negative outcomes occur when deer populations exceed 20 deer per square mile…the goal of the DNR is to bring the state’s herd to an average of 40 deer per square mile.”

The main problem is not the deer, it’s the DNR. That’s why the City of Morgantown should sue the DNR. That’s why Morgantown’s delegates to the legislature should introduce legislation to bring the state deer herd into ecological balance.

The DNR is not just irresponsible to the citizens, it is stupid and backwards. Fewer people nationwide are hunting, including in West Virginia, yet the DNR has grown the deer herd at the exact same time that the number of hunters continues to drop: “Hunting is a huge part of life in West Virginia but, mirroring a national trend, the number of hunters buying permits has been declining for years. The state sold 154,763 hunting permits to residents in 2006, according to the Division of Natural Resources, a 17 percent drop from 1997.”

In 2010, the number of deer hunters fell even more steeply: “A Division of Natural Resources number-cruncher has identified yet another factor that contributed to last year’s 31 percent deer harvest decline. Steve Brown, a DNR senior planner, believes at least part of the drop-off occurred because 12,000 fewer hunters ventured afield. Brown based his hypothesis on hunting-license sales, which plunged sharply in January, February and March of 2010 and never recovered.”

Bow hunting is illegal in much of Europe but not in Texas and the US where this deer was shot:

Sorry, City of Morgantown, you can’t combat these humane trends with your gruesome and pitiful bows and arrows. Try using the law for a change. We know you know how to do so when you are absolutely shaken from your lethargy and forced to do so.

And so the second worst problem after the DNR is the Morgantown City Council, which is probably more likely to get a person killed in a bow and arrow urban deer hunt than it is to solve any pressing deer issues.

Some in the WV legislature now want to introduce hunting classes into schools to help stem the loss of hunters. The more humane realize that those times should be gone: “The decline in hunters is something that should be celebrated…according to People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which said Wednesday the West Virginia bill is a bad idea. ‘Americans are compassionate people, and that’s why hunting is on the decline,’ said activist liaison Nicole Matthews. ‘Instead of teaching kids to be insensitive to suffering, we should be helping them appreciate nature in ways that aren’t destructive’.”

And so too should the DNR finally be forced to not be destructive to nature. The DNR should stop clear-cutting forests to plant deer food to grow the state herd. And it should stop doing everything else it does to increase the deer population. The DNR should plant trees to reforest all its clear-cuts to help gradually bring the deer back to ecological levels. The Morgantown City Council should be a leading part of efforts to do just that, to force the DNR to do the job it is supposed to be doing.

Bow-and-arrow-killing urban deer is the DNR’s advice, but the DNR has no credibility on this issue. The DNR caused the deer overpopulation in the first place and continues to be at fault. Heeding the advice of the DNR on this issue is like heeding the advice of the fox about the henhouse. The DNR heavily funds itself by selling hunting licenses, so the DNR is hopelessly compromised. The DNR has gone wild on deer and should be sued to bring the state deer herd back into ecological balance. Any other approach is counterproductive, backwards, and brutal. Read the rest of this entry »

SUPERINTENDENT: RESEARCH SHOWS WE HAVE AN OBLIGATION TO NOT STARVE KIDS! RESEARCH SHOWS! IT DOES!

“There has been research that shows hunger affects a child’s ability to learn,” said Monongalia County Schools Superintendent Frank Devono, at the school board meeting this past Tuesday, as reported in today’s Dominion Post. Well who would have thunk it?

Who but Superintendent Devono would think that research is needed to make such a point, that anyone would need to be convinced by research to know this, that anyone would need to hear of research to be concerned about denying children a day’s meal or two, or that “ability to learn” is the reason for the school district’s obligation, its imperative to feed children who lack money?

If research showed that hungry children actually learn more quickly would the the school district banish food from its domain?

And the phoniness. Superintendent Devono and company have been absolutely contemptuous of research all throughout Mon Schools’ largely secretive Woodburn and Easton school closing and siting process, in regard to a wide variety of humanitarian concerns for children, including vital safety and health issues, let alone the ability to learn.

The state basically requires that children go to school throughout the day, therefore the state should pay for the food the children need for the school day. Mon Schools’ should be pushing the state to fund all the children’s food. Mon Schools should be soliciting funds for food and for better food in addition to (or in place of) the multimillion dollars raised for an inherently dangerous sport like that big money pig: football. Instead Mon Schools pats itself on the back for standing up to the state’s insistence that it deny food to hungry children. Not a word reported that Mon Schools has done anything to raise money for food, or that Mon Schools actively pushes the state to take more responsibility for providing what it ought.

Why did Mon Schools not stand up to the state and its anti-educational, unsafe, and unhealthy consolidation of Easton and Woodburn Elementary? Oh, that’s right: because the school board’s and superintendent’s contempt for research and other knowledge about the well-being of the schoolchildren was, and remains, so great that they actively pushed for the dangerous fiasco, and continue to boast and preen about and attempt to justify the toxic idiocy. An act of pathetic comedy superceded only by its sheer negligence and unceasing menace.

The board and the superintendent are defensive about not having collected $240,000 in school lunch costs this past year. So all of a sudden citing research and their great humanitarian compassion for children, of which they are otherwise contemptuous, is laughable.

The state of West Virginia has allowed resource extraction companies to pillage the children of West Virginia forever, so the state should be viewed in the dimmest in of lights. The superintendent’s highly selective and oh so convenient recourse to research should be viewed in the same light.

MONONGALIA COUNTY SCHOOLS ADMINISTRATION: BEYOND THE PALE

According to the most recent site plan, below, for Eastwood Elementary, parents and children from Woodburn, Jerome Park, Woodland Terrace, and elsewhere will be forced to use WV 705 to enter and exit the new school. Nothing could be more unsafe, inconvenient, impractical or at times impossible.

Others are also endangered and disregarded, including parents and children who need to pick up and be picked up after school and drive downtown using US 119 (Mileground Road), and parents and children who might need to travel from Eastwood to Mountaineer Middle just off US 119 toward downtown.

That means taking up to an extra 5 or 6 mile roundabout loop through some of the most congested and hazardous parts of greater Morgantown to get where you need to go, to get home or downtown from Eastwood, or it means risking getting T-boned by traffic in crossing arterial highway 705 to make the immediate left turn from Eastwood necessary for the much shorter route. That left turn is often so hazardous or logistically difficult-to-impossible that WVDOT may not even allow it.

So where then is the sensible and absolutely necessary second access and egress for the new school? Where is the design, the plan, any details? Nowhere to be found. And nowhere on the most recent Eastwood site plan below. Why?

Is the Mon Schools administration stupid to the point of insanity? Or negligent to the point of criminality? Those seem to be the only two possible explanations. Is Mon Schools purposefully trying to punish and abuse the parents and children who currently attend Woodburn Elementary? Or is this more of a bit of accidental administrative negligence and incompetence?

Obviously an access/egress, or at least a right turn egress, should be built from the parking lot area of Eastwood to Tramore Lane (and thus to the Mileground Road/US 119). This is the only way to provide many students and their parents a much shorter and somewhat less hazardous route back to their homes or to downtown Morgantown.

Amazingly, this access and egress ALREADY EXISTS BUT MON SCHOOLS CURRENTLY PLANS TO GET RID OF IT, PER BELOW.

That’s right. The mobile home parcel being purchased by Mon Schools is served by Tramore Lane but Mon Schools’ most recent and longstanding design and plans disallow such access:

Above: Eastwood Site Plan, posted at BOE Eastwood website, summer, 2011

The Mon Schools design above even erases the road (Tramore Lane) that currently exists leading to and from the schoolgrounds and that will exist whether or not the school makes use of it. We restore the road and access points below, which currently enter and exit the area that would contain the school parking lot: Read the rest of this entry »