Legislature to put N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission under microscope

Deer-farm operations are focus of meeting originally scheduled in response to bear-poaching sting

Just when you thought the deer-farm issue had been resolved, the topic will reappear Tuesday, Nov. 18, in a special legislative hearing in Raleigh.

A select committee of the N.C. House on “Regulatory Authority and Operations of the N.C. Wildife Resources Commission” will meet at 10 a.m. in the Legislative Building’s Room 1228 to study:

• Whether the Commission should use standards adopted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and standards of other states related to the regulation of cervids (elk and various species of deer);
• The process other states use to issue transportation permits for the importing cervids into the state;
• Whether or not the Commission should allow the sale of antlers, antler velvet, or hides from captive populations of whitetail deer;
• The Commission’s fee schedule, staffing structure and enforcement authority, including: any reports of wildlife officers’ abuse of authority, the Commission’s collection of fees and expenditure of funds, whether the Commission’s executive director should be confirmed by the state legislature, whether duties currently under the jurisdiction of the Commission would be more efficiently performed by another agency of state government and any other issue the Committee deems relevant.

Members of the committee include co-chairs Tom Murry (R-Wake) and Roger West (R-Cherokee), Leo Daughtry (R-Johnston), Jimmy Dixon (R-Duplin/Wayne), Mike Hager (R-Burke/Rutherford), Susan Martin (R-Pitt/Wilson), Annie Mobley (D-Bertie/Gates/Hertford/Pasquotank), Garland Pierce (D-Hoke/Richmond/Robeson/Scotland), Mitchell Setzer (R-Catawba) and Ken Waddell (D-Bladen/Columbus/Robeson).

A source said the committee was formed after several of West’s constituents were snared in a four-year bear-poaching sting conducted by the Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Forest Service – with help from the state wildlife agencies from Georgia and Tennessee. The sting, called Operation Something Bruin, resulted in February 2013 arrests on charges including bear baiting, illegal use of dogs to hunt black bears, illegal taking of bears, operation of illegal bear enclosures and guiding hunts in national forests without required permits. Ten men were sentenced for these wildlife violations in June 2013.

Friends and relatives of the violators later held a meeting that was attended by West during which they described the “Gestapo” tactics of state and federal wildlife enforcement officers.

“The committee doesn’t have power to actually do anything except make recommendations. The hearing mostly will be for show, for the folks back home,” the source said. “I’m afraid nothing will come out of this (select hearing) but recommendations to the next (legislative) session.”

On Oct. 30, the Commission denied the wholesale expansion of deer farms approved in the 2014 state budget that was signed by Gov. Pat McCrory. The Commission allowed expansion of farms for red, axis and fallow deer – which are not native to North America – while refusing to relax restrictions on the farming of whitetail deer and elk, sticking to its guns with regard to preventing Chronic Wasting Disease from entering North Carolina.

The sale of deer parts is aimed at a lucrative market in the Far East, where many people believe that powdered deer antlers, especially those in velvet, possess power as medicines and aphrodisiacs.