NCWRC’s deer-farm vote deserves praise

Commission chose deer over politics

North Carolina’s sportsmen, especially deer hunters, felt better about the state’s wildlife agency after Oct. 30. And for good reason.

That’s the day the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission bucked the state Legislature and governor by voting unanimously not to follow a portion of the already-signed-into-law Budget Act of 2014. The section would have allowed unfettered expansion of “captive cervid” farms.

The 19 commissioners, in a compromise, approved more farms, but only for axis, fallow and red deer — not for whitetails and elk.

Their vote protects for at least another 2 ½ years (unless something awful happens) the state’s wild deer and deer hunting’s $1 billion annual economic impact from one method by which a deadly deer disease has entered 21 other states.

To many experts, including Commission biologists, the 2014 budget legislation was an invitation for Chronic Wasting Disease to cross our borders.

And why, you might ask, would anyone embark on such a course? Greed and money.

The state once had 109 “deer farms” mostly filled with whitetails. Today there are 37. Why the reduction? Two reasons: when the Commission began to monitor deer farms, it found lax adherence to agency regulations and, once CWD emerged nationally, the Commission decided to reduce the risk of the disease coming here and began to strictly enforce deer-farm rules — and spent $247,000 to buy out 15 farmers.

After the Commission thwarted a 2012 attempt by the N.C. Deer Farmers Association to transfer cervid management to the N.C. Department of Agriculture, another attack emerged in 2014 but from a different direction — through a legislator.

We’re informed that Rep. Roger West (R-Cherokee) added the cervids proposal to the House portion of the budget bill. It’s informative to know a major deer farmer leases land in Cherokee — in West’s district — and raises whitetails there.

It’s clear the Commission, under the leadership of chairman Jim Cogdell found a solution that required standing up to politicians but gave deer farmers part of what they wanted.

That public comment ran 99.6-percent against more deer farms bolstered the Commission. But part of the 2014 cervid legislation remains, leaving open the possibility whitetails legally might be transported into the state after July 1, 2017.

It’s heartening Cogdell and the current commissioners did the right thing for sportsmen and the state’s deer.  We owe them a debt of gratitude.

And future attempts at legislative retribution will be noticed by N.C.’s 260,000 deer hunters, most of them voters.