Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: MONDAY, February 27, 1995                   TAG: 9502280055
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: RON BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

REPORT ON PRESERVES UNSEEN

A state study that recommended a ban on enclosed shooting preserves such as Boar Walla Lodge was never given to key legislators seeking to regulate the preserves.

Both Sen. Malfourd "Bo" Trumbo, R-Fincastle, and Creigh Deeds, D-Warm Springs, confirmed Friday they had not seen a study done by the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. A copy of the study was obtained recently by the Roanoke Times & World-News.

"Even if they didn't have jurisdiction to regulate, they had jurisdiction to forward the information over here," Trumbo said. "It disturbs me that we didn't have all the facts. I'm going to get the information. I'm going back to the department and get the damn thing."

The Game and Inland Fisheries Mammal Shooting Enclosure Committee concluded in August that the state should close its three enclosed preserves and prohibit any new ones.

The committee report cited these potential dangers from bringing non-native animals into the state as a result of enclosed shooting preserves:

Introduction of disease or parasites into native wildlife and domestic livestock.

Serious damage to native ecosystems and their native plant and wildlife components.

The report also concluded that "establishment of a mammal shooting enclosure industry would provide economic benefit to a limited number of individuals while placing native wildlife, a publicly owned resource, at risk, as well as risking the substantial economic benefits associated with native wildlife and plants, agriculture and commercial timber operations."

The committee emphasized that regulation cannot ensure that native wildlife, agriculture and forestry resources will be protected.

The Game and Inland Fisheries opposition to enclosed shooting preserves drew support from the Virginia Pork Industry Association.

"Why anyone would chance the threat to an industry that means one-half billion dollars to Virginia's economy is beyond understanding," T. Jeffrey Jennings, the association's president, wrote to Bob Duncan, chief of the Game and Inland Fisheries' Wildlife Division. "The disease threat from feral swine to the commercial swine industry is real."

Jennings was not generous in his assessment of enclosed shooting preserves, animal-rights advocates who oppose them or the news media.

"The legalization of these phony hunts will just serve to bring adverse attention to the swine industry," he said. "Do-gooders that operate on emotions are just waiting to implicate our industry. Then the media will blow this out of proportion. The consumers will pay in the end as more testing, more programs, less producers and less hogs increase overall food expenditures."

Deeds said those concerns should have been addressed in the past year by the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, which was given the task by the 1994 General Assembly of crafting regulations to govern the preserves.

"We didn't receive any notice when it didn't go forward," Deeds said. "It was a total lack of courtesy."

Actually, Duncan said, the hitch came in the form of a ruling from the Attorney General's Office.

Duncan said the Game and Inland Fisheries Board was briefed on the report in October and had set a special meeting in December to discuss regulations to govern the preserves.

But in December, the department was told by Assistant Attorney General Dennis Treacy that the General Assembly bill was flawed technically because it didn't give the department the authority to enact the regulations it had been told to draw up, Duncan said.

Treacy's concern, Duncan said, was that Game and Inland Fisheries has control over game hunting, while animals in shooting enclosures are considered domesticated.

"They can call these animals anything," Duncan said. "They can't call them wild."

In light of Treacy's ruling, the department did not act to impose regulations, and Deeds and Trumbo began pushing a new bill to give the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries the power to regulate enclosed hunting preserves. But the department didn't let the two legislators know about its August report calling for an outright ban.

Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1995