Our mission is to provide you, our neighbors and friends, with as much detailed information regarding what we perceive as a Township sponsored “private hunt” in our own open space woods behind our homes, disguised as a “Deer Management Plan.”

Safety First promotes a variety of other alternatives to this proposed hunt, a so-called deer reduction program.  There are safer means to “controlling” the deer and bow and arrow hunting is the least effective way of controlling a deer population.  But most importantly, protecting not just the residents of East Goshen, but also those who visit and travel throughout our great neighborhoods, safety must be our number one priority.

The EGT Deer Management Plan (DMP) was approved on April 1, 2008 and does not address safety. The Board of Supervisors failed to respond to specific concerns about safety.  We are opposed to the DMP and we are shocked that the EGT Board of Supervisors would approve such a reckless and irresponsible plan.  Specific shortcomings of the plan include:
        

1. The EGT DMP does not address resident safety.
2. The hunting boundaries are defined such that lethal trajectories significantly overlap residents' backyards where children play, residents garden and maintain their properties, pets frequently play, etc. The 50-yard safety zone is woefully inadequate in our residential neighborhoods.
3. The hunting areas abut/include school bus stops and pedestrian/school children walkways to bus stops and these areas will be used by hunters for 5 months out of the school year, dawn to dusk, Monday through Saturday.
   
   

Yes - The primary responsibility of township supervisors is the health, welfare and safety of the residents. It is unsafe to hunt the open spaces abutting our backyards as we and our children work and play in our backyards.  Allowing recreational hunt clubs to project lethal trajectories within yards of our backyards is reckless and irresponsible.  It is unconscionable that the EGT board would ask the township residents to bear the risks of lethal and fatal injuries as well as impinge on our property rights.  These costs and risks to our safety far outweigh any conceivable benefit of your proposed hunting program.

The board's approval of allowing recreational hunters to hunt our properties for 5 months of the year for the next 10 years underscores the board's failure to consider the health, welfare, and safety of the township residents.  We respectfully ask you to stop the planned recreational hunt immediately.  Get serious about deer management and formulate a plan that reduces the deer population that does not grossly impact our personal safety and property rights.