Breeders of white-tailed deer have warned top officials at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department to not destroy any internal communications ahead of possible legal action against the agency.
The breeders’ lawyer, Jennifer Riggs, said in the letter that there is a “substantial chance” the claims will be filed.
“There is very little else I could add at this juncture,” Smith wrote to the American-Statesman.
Riggs didn’t return calls for comment, and the names of the breeders she represents were not disclosed in the letter. There was also no indication of when the suit could be filed.
Riggs indicated in her letter to Smith that she and other lawyers might challenge a long-held provision in Texas that says all deer are considered property of the state. The lawyers could ask a judge to decide through a quick-resolution process called declaratory judgment to deem captive-bred deer to be private property, she said in her letter to Smith.
Also, breeders’ lawyers have suggested the department’s leadership may have violated open meeting laws by privately communicating with members of the gubernatorially appointed Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission “for the purpose of engaging in secret deliberations” when a quorum of the commission wasn’t present in a public meeting.
Additionally, Riggs said in her letter that the department violated breeders’ constitutional rights with its recent regulations.
Immediately following the detection of the disease, the state banned any transportation of captive deer by all the state’s breeders. Officials later allowed a small portion of breeders to move their animals ahead of the upcoming hunting season. The state later loosened the restrictions again, giving more breeders the ability to move and sell the captive-bred animals they have raised to ranches in Texas.
After Tuesday, no deer can be moved under the Parks and Wildlife Department rules unless they have had their antlers cut off. Deer hunting season begins Oct. 3 for archers and on Nov. 7 for everyone else.
Officials — along with several ranch owners — have expressed concerns that the rare disease might spread among the nearly 4 million white-tailed deer in the wild in Texas and hurt the state’s multimillion-dollar deer hunting industry.
Meanwhile, many breeders have suggested that the disease may be benign, despite the potential for serious symptoms.
The fight over deer breeding has been ongoing for years, as some ranchers — many of whom own some of the largest, most storied properties in Texas — don’t want to see the proliferation of small breeding operations and the hunting leases they serve. Many of the breeders, on the other hand, say they are operating businesses that allow them to hold onto family ranches.
Source: Austin American Statesman
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