Council votes to allow sharpshooting of deer at Griffy

The Bloomington City Council voted to approve an ordinance to allow sharpshooting of deer at Griffy Lake Nature Preserve.

The council discussed the sharpshooting ordinance at its meeting for the second reading Wednesday, which elicited strong support and disapproval from the public in addition to the already publicized opposition from the Humane Society of the United States.

The council reached a vote of 6-2-1 to approve the ordinance after 1 a.m. Thursday after lengthy discussion and public comment.

Council members Steve Volan and Dorothy Granger voted against the ordinance, and member Tim Mayer abstained.

The amendment to the current ordinance, proposed by council member Dave Rollo, would allow only professional sharpshooters contracted by the city to hunt within the nature preserve.

Municipal code previously did not allow any use of a firearm within city limits unless it is discharged by a law enforcement officer or used in self-defense.

Council members Rollo and Andy Ruff’s concern is that deer overpopulation is starting to negatively impact other animal and plant species. Sharpshooting is the best option, Rollo said, because it is effective and humane.

Rollo began his presentation with a letter he received from the Board of Park Commissioners asking him to make “necessary decisions” to deal with deer overabundance in Griffy Lake Nature Preserve.

“Griffy Lake Nature Preserve faces a serious and eminent threat to its existence as a healthy and vital ecosystem. To put it bluntly, Griffy woods is dying and we need your help to try to save it,” Rollo read from the letter.

He then explained there is an abundance of evidence supporting that deer are having “severe and profound effects” on Griffy.

Rollo concluded his presentation by warning that Griffy may become an “alternate stable state” severely lacking in biodiversity. If Bloomington fails to act quickly, this shift may be irreversible.

However, a number of Bloomington locals disagree with Rollo, and opposition to the ordinance is on the rise.

Sandra Shapshay, assistant professor in the IU Department of Psychology, wrote a letter to the council giving a number of reasons the ordinance should not pass — not only for humane purposes, but also for economic reasons.

In the letter, Shapshay criticized Rollo for using a study conducted by Dr. Angela Shelton to suggest the situation in Griffy is an “ecological catastrophe.”

The study, Forest Ecology and Management, was published in February and has been cited by Rollo as evidence of the urgent need for the sharpshooting program.

Shapshay said she disagrees and provides evidence from the study in her letter, suggesting the situation is not as time sensitive as Rollo has insisted.

“When you actually read Dr. Shelton’s article, you see that, actually, the scientific findings in that study do not corroborate Mr. Rollo’s claim that there is an ecological catastrophe in Griffy that is so urgent we don’t have time to explore these nonlethal measures,” she said.

The letter also noted that sharpshooting is not in line with the Bloomington Deer Task Force’s statement that killing deer should only be used as a last resort. However, Ruff said this argument is misleading.

“If you actually read the whole paragraph, it was clearly not in conflict at all,” Ruff said. “There are people in the community who are doing this that should know better and, frankly, should be embarrassed.”

When Council Member Stephen Volan asked Josh Griffin, a regional supervisor with the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, for an estimation of the deer in Griffy, he was unable to give one.

Council Member Marty Spechler said he understands that asking for an estimation of deer living in an open system is an impractical question, but an estimation of how many deer the city will need to kill is not. Shapshay said she agrees the deer numbers are critical.

“If we don’t really know how many deer there are in Griffy, we don’t know how many deer need to be killed in order to have this program succeed,” Shapshay said. “And we don’t know how much it’s going to cost or how to measure success of the program.”

Shapshay and the 86 Bloomington locals who have signed the opposition letter urge the council to consider immunocontraception before passing the ordinance.

Griffin, however, said contraception is only successful in a closed system and, even then, the deer reduction is very minimal.

“It hasn’t been demonstrated in a free ranging deer herd, to my knowledge, anywhere,” Griffin said. “I don’t see why it would be any different here.”

In 2012, the Humane Society of the United States offered to send Allen Rutberg, an immunocontraception specialist at Tufts University Center for Animals and Public Policy, to Bloomington to assess the feasibility of using immunocontraception methods on deer in Griffy.

Shapshay said the council has yet to respond to HSUS’s offer, but that the offer still stands. Rollo and Ruff pointed out that by the time they had received the offer, the Deer Task Force had already considered all of the alternatives and had begun to write the report.

Rollo said there was nothing new offered at that point.

“Keep in mind, the HSUS could have come to any meeting in the previous months and, as a matter of fact, their director lived in my district,” Rollo said. “And Sterling came to one of the very last meetings that we had, didn’t offer any comment.”

Rollo said there had been no other communication from the HSUS to him or the council since 2012 until now.

The locals at the meeting were split on the issue.

Christine Linnemeier, Bloomington local, argued in favor of the ordinance at the meeting. Just as we humanely euthanize cats and dogs in society, we need to do the same with deer, she said.

“Limiting the numbers of deer is also necessary and the most practical and humane way of doing this is with sharp shooters,” Linnemeier said. “I’m very much in favor of this ordinance.”

On the other hand, IU graduate student Johnathan Hecht gave an argument against the ordinance, which provoked a roaring applause.

Hecht compared the ordinance to a hypothetical situation in which he has five puppies tearing up his lawn and decides to kill them all with a baseball bat.

He argued that if anyone heard this, they would be horrified.

“And yet we feel that we, as a society, instead have the right of life and death,” Hecht said. “Well, that might be true that this is merely the way this works. We, as a society, do have the right to execute animals, but it is not necessary in this case.”