Animal Rights Group Wants Will County To End Deer Culling
CHICAGO (CBS) -- The head of a suburban-based animal protection group was trying to stop - or at least change - Will County's deer culling program; and he said he took hidden camera video to back up his claim that it's cruel and unnecessary.
"We're questioning the need for a deer kill program at all," said Steve Hindi, president of the group Showing Animals Respect and Kindness (SHARK). "For all the weeks that our cameras were in those preserves, we don't have very many deer getting killed; and the reason for that is, because there just weren't many deer."
Video filmed by SHARK can be seen at the bottom of this post.
Hindi spoke at the Will County Forest Preserve Board meeting Thursday. It was news to Board President Suzanne Hart that Hindi had set up hidden cameras in the forests.
"Our director, our staff, our police chief - no one knew of this," she said. "That's going to be an issue down the pike."
Hindi acknowledged SHARK did not get permission to set up cameras in the forest preserves.
"If they knew the cameras were up, we wouldn't have gotten a real look at the program. They're trying to do this in complete secrecy, and that's one of the big problems we have," he said.
Hart disputed Hindi's conclusion that the deer cull is unnecessary.
"The majority of what he had said was, in fact, false," she said.
"We do have an over-abundance of deers, and they're starving to death," she added. "There's so many of these deer that there's people that can't even keep – they can never have a garden, (the ones who) have homes off of the forest preserve."
Hart said there is no plan to change Will County's deer culling program.