FOTWD $500 Challenge to EAC, The Sierra Club, and Audubon Society

The Friends of the White Deer hereby offers a $500.00 challenge-donation to the EAC, The Sierra Club, and The Audubon Society. We challenge these groups to poll their membership. If poll results prove that members truly support the Park Service's program to exterminate all of the Fallow and Axis Deer from the Point Reyes National Seashore, Friends of the White Deer will donate $500.00 to the named organizations.

We believe that members of these organizations, many of whom belong to Friends of the White Deer, disagree with the pro-extermination position that their leadership has taken. We believe that members favor some kind of management program that would stabilize Fallow and Axis Deer herd sizes at some sustainable level.

Over half of these approximately 1,200 animals have already been killed. The surviving deer offer no threat to the environment, and their herd sizes can easily be maintained at these new population levels.

One solution to this divisive issue would be to now move to either 'Alternative B' or 'Alternative C' of the Park Service's own Environmental Impact Statement. Both these plans envision precisely just such reasonable management programs at the now reduced population levels.

We challenge the EAC, Audubon, and Sierra Club to poll their members and ask them how they feel about the following two statements:

1. "The Fallow and Axis Deer should be completely exterminated from the Point Reyes National Seashore."

2. "The Fallow and Axis Deer should not be exterminated, but their herd sizes should be managed at sustainable levels."

Members should be given a choice of responses such as: agree, strongly agree, disagree, strongly disagree, and no opinion.

FOTWD challenges your groups to discover where your members truly stand on this important local issue.