Follow-up from todays paper after meeting last night--even with the storm!
Opponents slam pay-to-hunt proposal
Gary Craig
Staff writer
Post Comment
(December 14, 2007) Opponents of a proposed pay-to-hunt preserve at the former Seneca Army Depot placed the plan squarely in their sights Thursday and blasted it.
At a morning public hearing in the town of Varick, about 70 people braved the winter storm to challenge a plan by a Waterloo-based company for the preserve at the depot site. More than 25 people spoke, with only one voicing any support for the proposal.
What has largely galvanized the opposition is the presence of a herd of rare white deer at the depot a herd that some conservationists say is the only one of its kind and size in the world. Some anti-hunting advocates as well as hunters have united in their opposition, maintaining that the preserve could be nothing more than a place for wealthy individuals with little appreciation for the outdoors to pretend to be sportsmen.
Waterloo-based L.M. Sessler Excavating & Wrecking Inc. has proposed to lease and later purchase about 2,300 acres of the depot from the Seneca County Industrial Development Authority. Sessler wants to build the preserve and a lodge at the site, as well as set aside an area for organic agriculture.
Sessler has asked the IDA for tax breaks for the project. The IDA controls development at the depot and would have to approve the project for it to move forward.
At the IDA's public hearing Thursday, opponents maintained that the deer could be threatened, that the land should stay in the public domain and that more tourism could be generated by opening the area to wildlife watchers than wildlife hunters.
Former Lieutenant Governor Mary Anne Krupsak, who lives in Varick, urged the IDA and Sessler to consider using the property to attract people to come "with cameras instead of guns."
Conservationists, including organizations that presented a display after the hearing about the booming popularity of wildlife watching, encouraged the IDA to refuse assistance for Sessler. The company has pitched itself as a very successful business, some speakers noted.
"If people are so well-to-do, let them go out and buy 2,300 acres on the open market and do what they want," said John Knight, a Willard resident.
Neither Sessler nor the IDA made formal presentations at the hearing. While IDA staff attended, no IDA board members were present.
IDA Board member and secretary Kenneth Lee Patchen Jr. said by telephone after the meeting that the board typically relies on staff to distill the information from public hearings and present it to the board.
The only support for the plan came from Mark James, a representative of the Seneca County Farm Bureau. James said the proposal would return the depot land to the tax rolls, and the hunt would have to be in concert with state wildlife management plans. The opposition, he said, was really a stride toward the banning of hunting.
The white deer are now hunted at the depot for about 10 days annually to keep the herd thinned.
IDA officials said after the meeting that an environmental review of the proposal must be completed before any decision can be made about tax assistance.
That review, which will be overseen by town of Varick officials, could take two to three months.
