There is an astonishingly sad story out of the UK, where many people are known for their all abiding kindness to animals. In the case of the Baronsdown red deer sanctuary near Dulverton in Somerset, kind intentions and a refusal to act in the best interests of captive animals have resulted in miserable starvation of several hundred animals, held "safe" in an enclosure where hunters may not cull them.

Gordon Pearce is an employee of the sanctuary, and for many years it was his job to humanely kill sick or injured animals. He has finally "gone public" with the news that his organization, the League Against Cruel Sports, has for the past year, routinely refused to allow him to euthanize old or sick deer so that the others might have enough food, and be free from disease. He now reports that most animals in the herd of 350 are either sick or are dying from starvation, and that "if they were domestic stock, the owners would be prosecuted for neglect."

Other problems on the preserve are rampant inbreeding, as stags are seen to be breeding their own offspring or their own dams. Consequently, according to Pearce, the stock is developing animals that are inferior and stunted, as well as being starved from lack of adequate pasture and forage in their "sanctuary".

IWMC notes that a similar problem once occurred in the eastern US, in a forest preserve where hunting was prohibited. The white-tail deer there became so starved, inbred and scrawny that adult males weighed barely 35 pounds at maturity. This miserable failure at wildlife management was all because of a cultural preference by some to manage a deer herd by doing nothing to keep them at numbers suitable for their environment. When the carrying capacity of a forest is vastly exceeded by the animals fenced within it, miserable death by starvation is the inevitable result. This is not kindness in action. It is cruelty of a most basic and evil kind.

IWMC congratulates Mr. Pearce for bringing this situation to the attention of the public and the press. He is a man of integrity and courage. His efforts to persuade the League Against Cruel Sports to take appropriate action for the welfare of the herd have been in vain. IWMC urges that all good and kind people in the UK demand that action be immediately taken to end the suffering of those red deer, and to cause their legislators to ensure that such conditions shall never be allowed to be perpetrated again. Is it not ironic that such a call for action must come from all those devoted to the principles of proper wildlife management through hunting, given that this extreme cruelty is the work of anti-hunters?