ARLINGTON – About 20 concerned citizens gathered in the snow Saturday afternoon to protest Vassar College’s decision to cull deer in the school’s Vassar Farm and Ecological Preserve (VFEP).
Blowing snow didn’t stop the protest
Vassar Farm is an area of under one square mile with trees and fields, owned by the college, within the City and Town of Poughkeepsie. The overabundance of deer on the VFEP is having a negative impact on plant diversity at the farm property, according to the college.
There are some 50 deer that travel through farm property and the surrounding neighborhoods and founder of Save Our Deer, Mary Schwartz, is miffed by the college’s reasoning for the cull.
“Vassar says we have to keep shooting, baiting them and shooting them, which is not hunting, by the way, forever, because we don’t think that any more than 10 deer should be allowed to live?” she said.
Schwartz feels the college is flouting the city and Dutchess County laws against rifle hunting and the city is not enforcing the laws with the college.
The college first started working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services in 2013 and a private company which employs sharpshooters to cull the deer in 2010.
Bill Crain of Safe Haven Farm Sanctuary in Beekman feels that the college is placing its needs above the value of an animal’s life.
“I don’t believe they should be killing the animals,” Crain said. “These animals want to live as much as humans do. They have families and emotions, and they are living beings. There have to be other solutions to whatever problems they see.”
Vassar College student Caden McGuire thinks the college is spending too much money on the culling and could find a less expensive and more humane solution.
“Just put up a fence,” McGuire said reading the sign she was holding.
The college does donate the venison to local food pantries, according to its website, providing tens of thousands of meals.
Schwartz is less than impressed. The state makes them do that, according to Schwartz, and college turns it into a PR move, she said.
