In early February, government workers with the North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission made a truly stunning and horrifying discovery.
A dairy farmer had shot multiple elk while in the process of protecting his farm from damage from the wild animals. That’s not the horrifying part, though. No: he had failed to file the proper paperwork in the process of protecting his property.
1,000 POUNDS OF PAPERWORK: It would be illegal to protect your property without telling the government under new rules.
Not for all of the elk he had shot, mind you. The Resource Commission biologists were visiting his farm in the first place because he had followed proper procedure and reported three elk that he had shot days before. But while on their visit to close out the paperwork, they came upon the shocking revelation that he had shot other elk that had moved onto his farm and failed to file paperwork for them.
An investigation found that there was nothing wrong with what the dairy farmer had done. So the bureaucrats at the Wildlife Commission did what bureaucrats do: They immediately started the process of making sure that what the farmer had done would be illegal in the future.
“It clearly identified a bigger issue we needed to address,” Brad Howard, an official with the Wildlife Management Division of the Resources Commission, told the Asheville Citizen-Times. “There was a concern that perhaps that would be the perception that others would start killing elk.”
So the Wildlife Resources Commission has proposed that any farmer who wishes to protect his property from elk either apply for a permit, or report to the commission within 24 hours on any elk that have been shot.
Elk were delisted as a species of concern earlier this year, but the Resources Commission is still worried that farmers protecting their property are a danger to the elk population.
The commission will receive comments on the proposed rules through October.
Only seven elk have been killed this year by people protecting their property.
“We have not seen an onslaught of elk killing this year,” Howard said. But apparently, the rules are still too lenient to suit North Carolina’s nannies.
