PGC president removed

Pennsylvania Game Commission members voted 4-2 last week to at least temporarily remove Thomas Boop from his position as president. Boop, who has been critical of the Game Commission's deer management program, will fight to keep the post.

One of the commissioners voting with the majority said Boop's position on deer management was not the reason those four voted to remove him.

He said the vote was instead based on Boop's challenging of the competence and motivations of his colleagues.

Boop has called the state's deer policy "fatally flawed." He wants to reduce the number of anterlerless deer-hunting licenses issued, to increase the herd in some areas where populations have fallen. However, the majority of the board accepts agency biologists' recommendations that they be stabilized or reduced further in some areas to allow forests damaged by deer to regenerate.