Bogus justification for deer kills

Biologist Daniel Ludwig left out some key facts in his bogus justification to slaughter deer as a tool to control chronic wasting disease. Crucial among these well-established facts is that CWD is a low incidence disease and will remain so whether or not the Illinois Department of Natural Resources kills a majority of healthy deer to find a small number with the disease.

He takes nonsensical credit for the fact that CWD is at very low levels. IDNR’s most recent report states that out of 7,583 deer killed and tested for the disease only 42 tested positive for CWD. States that have had the disease for decades came to the conclusion, long ago, that the rates stay the same whether you cull the deer or not. So why does Ludwig want to expand the program in Kane County and continue to spend more than a million dollars a year on this vile program where their own reports state that 35 percent of the deer killed are fawns?

Ludwig writes that taxpayers don’t finance the program and neglects to mention that Pittman-Robertson Act funds are used for the slaughter. The funds come from a tax on guns, ammunition and archery equipment. The Illinois Policy Institute conducted an investigation into IDNR’s use of Pittman-Robertson Act funds and stated, “The Illinois Department of Natural Resources is misappropriating millions of dollars that should have been earmarked for public shooting ranges, public hunting lands, and fish and game conservation.” Rather than using the money as intended, the IDNR is pumping the state’s Pittman-Robertson Act funds into two state universities on questionable studies.

This is the dubious agency sending sharpshooters to Kane County — sending a message that violence is normal. Officials who join IDNR biologist Daniel Ludwig in his plans to expand this slaughter must be voted out of office.

Billita Jacobsen

Carpentersville