In July a federal judge heard arguments in a lawsuit filed by the Humane Society of the United States, the Fund for Animals, and the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals aimed at ending a ring-tailed pheasant hunting season at Cape Cod National Seashore.
The groups filed the lawsuit last fall and attempted to obtain an injunction to stop the hunt, which was turned down by the judge.
The groups that the National Park Service has never performed an environmental impact study of the pheasant hunting, and that such a study would likely find against the hunt. The case is complicated by the fact that the ring-tailed pheasant is a non-native species to Cape Cod. Every hundreds of the birds are bought by the state, trucked to Cape Cod National Seashore, and released the night before the October hunt.
Kimberly Ockene, a lawyer representing the animal rights groups, was quoted by the Boston Globe as asking,
Why should the federal government be supporting something as inhumane as this on national parkland for a few hundred hunters? They’re supporting and authorizing a program to truck in nonnative species that are farm-raised and completely unprepared to survive in the world.
According to the Globe, he practice of stocking pheasants for hunting began in 1906 and Massachusetts releases 40,000 pheasant across the state every year.
Eugenia Carris, an assistant U.S. attorney for the National Park Service, told the judge that the stocking of pheasants would likely be phased out as the Park Service restores the area’s natural greenery and native game birds return. Carris said,
The park has to balance various interests, the interests of people who want to use the land in a traditional recreational way with the interests of people who want to abolish hunting. We’re talking about a few hundred birds that don’t live that long. Thy are not invasive. There’s no evidence there’s significant effect on the environment.
Source:
Pheasant stocking is target of lawsuit. Andrea Estes, Boston Globe, July 16, 2003.