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Animal Defenders of Westchester |
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Home Page We advocate on all animal protection and exploitation issues, including experimentation, factory farming, rodeos, breeders and traveling animal acts. Animal Defenders of Westchester |
Campaigns A Deer Contraceptive Is Turning Off the Heat Two versions of the same article on Deer Contraception were published in
the Washington Post and the Seattle Times. The titles are different as well as differences in the text due to
editing. Below is the full text of the Washington Post version and the link for
the Seattle Post article. The Washington Post article was printed on Thursday and it appears that
the Seattle Times article ( Oh dear: no sex for deer ) was published today,
Sat. Sept. 21. Info. for letters to the editor follows the article. Please do not cc an email of your letter to both publications. Neither paper will publish a letter if they see it is being submitted to
another publication. (The Fire Island contraception program is mentioned in the article.) WASHINGTON POST A Deer Contraceptive Is Turning Off the Heat By Cameron W. Barr Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, August 19, 2004; Page B01 Deer in Montgomery County enjoy many of the conveniences of modern life
in the suburbs: abundant food, few predators, a little room to spread out.
Oh yes, and contraception. Since the mid-1990s, deer on the campus of the National Institute of
Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg have been able to rut without
regret, thanks to a contraceptive program administered by the Humane Society
of the United States. Now deer living on federal property in White Oak, in
the eastern part of the county, are being injected with a different
contraceptive that will prevent pregnancy by keeping them from going into
heat. This scientific advance -- the no-sex deer -- is the result of
research conducted by the Department of Agriculture's National Wildlife
Research Center. This month, the center is capturing 40 to 60 does at White Oak, half of
which will be injected with the no-sex contraceptive. The other half will serve as a control group. All will be tagged and
fitted with radio collars for monitoring. The goal is a one-shot deer contraceptive that would offer those in
charge of managing deer populations a realistic alternative to killing. Deer populations have boomed in the past century, causing communities
across the country to find ways to shrink the size of herds. In most cases,
officials have used hunters or sharpshooters to cull deer, but animal rights
activists and others have called for the development of a deer
contraceptive. "It's kind of the Holy Grail of [deer contraception]: to come up with
something that you could inject once and have it work for five years or so,"
said Michael E. Newman, a spokesman for the National Institute of Standards
and Technology. That is exactly the goal of the White Oak trial. The contraceptive works
by inducing antibodies to attack a hormone necessary for reproduction -- the
vaccine effectively shuts down the animals' reproductive systems. In tests
the wildlife research center has conducted at Pennsylvania State University,
researchers have found that vaccinated does do not go into estrus, or heat,
and that bucks don't rut. "We believe it's effective for two to three years," said Kathleen A.
Fagerstone, acting director of the center. The technology in use at NIST involves the deer's immune system in a
different way. That vaccine uses a protein from pigs to generate antibodies
that render the eggs of the female deer impervious to sperm. One
disadvantage is that the vaccine requires annual booster shots. Canadian biologists have developed a one-shot vaccine using similar
technology, but their product, known as SpayVac, does not eliminate heat and
rutting. "It's really quite elegant," said Mark A. Fraker, president of
SpayVac-for-Wildlife Inc. "The animals maintain their normal behavior; they
just don't get pregnant." None of these products has received approval from the Food and Drug
Administration, so their use is limited to experimental trials. As part of the process, the deer are tagged with a warning that they are
not to be consumed by humans. And because it's impossible to tell in any
other way whether a deer has been vaccinated, each one is tagged for
identification. A contraceptive program has been underway at Fire Island, N.Y., since the
early 1990s. Since then, perhaps a half-dozen other communities have hosted
contraceptive trials, but the method requires money and patience. Anthony J. DeNicola, a biologist who runs a nonprofit wildlife management
firm, White Buffalo Inc., said the best solution might be a combination of
lethal culling and contraception. He advises communities to tag, mark and
vaccinate the most approachable deer in a target population "and kill all
the others." Contraception is expensive, largely because of the cost of capturing
deer. SpayVac's Fraker estimates that a contraception program can cost from
$300 to $500 per deer; inviting hunters in to use lethal means, can, in many
cases, be free. The institute's program has reduced the size of the herd on the
institute's 578-acre campus from a late-1990s peak of 320 to 200, Newman
said. The no-sex contraceptive might have an additional advantage if the goal
is to prevent deer from becoming a nuisance or a threat to humans.
Eliminating rutting, which can make deer oblivious to such things as
vehicles in their surroundings, could cut down on the number of collisions
between deer and cars -- one of the main reasons communities want to reduce
their deer populations. But at the same time, scientists have no idea what
other ramifications might ensue from suppressing the urge to mate. Contraception has some practical merits in suburban settings where lethal
culling is too dangerous because of the proximity of people. At both the
institute and White Oak, the experimentation with deer contraception derives
from an additional factor: the apparent squeamishness of federal workers.
In the case of the institute, said spokesman Newman, "hunting was not a
popular alternative within the staff." At White Oak, where the FDA is moving
into a 130-acre spread once occupied by the Navy, the new tenants "had
expressed [a] preference" for contraception over hunting, Fagerstone said.
To Submit a Letter to the Editor of the Washington Post:
[email protected]
Do not send attachments; they will not be read. Include home address and home and business telephone numbers. Article Title: A Deer Contraceptive Is Turning Off the Heat Article Source: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13311-2004Aug18.html SEATTLE TIMES Article Source: To Submit a Letter to the Editor of the Seattle Times: Include your full name (no initials), home address and daytime & evening telephone for verification. For questions regarding your letter, please call 206-464-2132. E-mail: [email protected] Fax: (206) 382-6760 Article title: Oh dear: no sex for deer Fair Use Notice: This document may contain copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owners. We believe that this not-for-profit, educational use on the Web constitutes a fair use of the copyrighted material (as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law). If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond fair use, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. |
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