Where is PETA? Where’s the HSUS and the rest of the big animal groups? They should be making a big stink over this.
When will this madness stop?
This happened in Wisconsin. And it makes me sick. It doesn’t get worse than this. How nauseating and moronic, not to mention pitiless toward animals, can regulations governing the life and death of wildlife get? Not to mention the stupid and uncompassionate people who enforce them. Who are the politicians who pass such laws? As my fellow animal defender Natalia Jarnstedt puts it, with justifiable rage, “These morons killed the fawn “just because” it was kept at a regular shelter, not a rehabber – it’s their policy! Killing fawns and breaking compassionate people’s hearts is their game!” I have to agree. And what a waste of police and social resources!—Patrice Greanville
Outrage grows as word spreads about baby deer’s death in freak raid (Video)
- By: Penny Eims
A ripple of disbelief and rage is spreading across the nation as word spreads about a bizarre raid on the Society of St. Francis in Kenosha, Wis., reported Thursday’s WND News.
The raid, complete with multiple squad cars and several armed officers from the state Department of Natural Resources, was organized after DNR officials received a tip about a two-week-old fawn who was being cared for by the no-kill animal shelter.
The young deer, named “Giggles,” was being cared for by the rescue agency until she could be transferred to a wildlife shelter.
But Giggles never had the opportunity to be transferred because the DNR agents who descended upon the shelter killed her instead.
A shelter employee stated:
“I was thinking in my mind they were going to take the deer and take it to a wildlife shelter, and here they come carrying the baby deer over their shoulder. She was in a body bag,”
DNR Supervisor Jennifer Niemeyer defended the agents’ actions, stating that the fawn was killed because she posed a potential danger of disease and danger to humans.
The shelter intends to file a suit against the DNR because they seized Giggles without a court hearing.
No word on how the potential for disease from a baby deer is any greater to the general public than to hunters who handle their “kill,” or to police and/or wildlife officials who remove deer carcasses from the road after they have been killed by a motor vehicle.
ADDENDUM
The Associated Press version
Wisconsin DNR defends removing fawn from shelter, killing it
Associated Press
POSTED: 08/02/2013 12:01:00 AM CDT | UPDATED: 72 MIN. AGO
KENOSHA, Wis. — Wisconsin wildlife officials defended their decision to remove a fawn from a no-kill shelter and euthanize it, saying state law requires such action to prevent the spread of disease.
The fawn, named Giggles, was brought to the St. Francis Society shelter near the state line by an Illinois family who believed the animal had lost its mother.
Shelter workers told WISN-TV the fawn had been there about two weeks when armed Department of Natural Resources agents showed up with a search warrant and took the animal. The DNR began investigating after receiving two anonymous calls about the deer.
Wisconsin law prohibits people from taking animals from the wild or keeping a wild animal without a permit.
Shelter employee Ray Schulze said he told DNR agents the fawn was scheduled to go to an animal preserve in Illinois the next day but they took Giggles anyway.
“Then here they come, carrying the baby deer over their shoulder, like a bag of — she was in a body bag,” Schulze said. “I said, ‘Why did you do that?’ He said, ‘Well, it’s our policy.'”
DNR Warden Supervisor Jennifer Niemeyer told the television station that state law requires animals like the fawn to be euthanized because they could spread disease.
DNR spokesman Bill Cosh told the Associated Press on Friday that the main concern with deer is chronic wasting disease, a fatal illness that affects the nervous system. CWD has been found in 17 states. To help prevent its spread, state and federal laws bar moving deer illegally taken from the wild to rehabilitation facilities in other states without authorization.
“These are always difficult situations for both parties involved, and we are empathetic to the fact of what happened because we know in our heart of hearts, they tried to do the right thing,” Niemeyer told the television station.
She said the fawn was not killed at the shelter, but tranquilized and euthanized later.
“I don’t care where they would have killed her, it would have been wrong,” shelter President Cindy Schultz said.
BY NATALIE JARNSTEDT This disease thing is utter bovine excrement – CWD, indeed. I am so sick and tired of their idiotic and self-serving logic. In that case, what would be so different about the same fawn(s) at licensed rehabbers, growing up, and eventually being returned to the wild only to be hunted down by all the asshole Elmer Fudds? By their own logic, they, too, should be considered being diseased, right? And if deer are indeed carriers of such horrible and threatening diseases, why are deer “managed” by state wildlife agencies to procreate as much as possible to keep… Read more »