{"id":449859,"date":"2026-02-05T04:45:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-05T04:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/449859\/"},"modified":"2026-02-05T04:45:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-05T04:45:11","slug":"iron-mountain-to-remove-deer-pen-from-city-park","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/449859\/","title":{"rendered":"Iron Mountain to remove deer pen from city park"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">IRON MOUNTAIN, Mich. (WLUC) &#8211; For 75 years, the Iron Mountain City Park has allowed visitors to observe deer from the deer pen in the park. But Monday, the city council has voted to remove the deer pen from the park, and the deer will have to be killed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Iron Mountain Mayor Dale Alessandrini is among those in the community saddened to see it end this way.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cYes, we needed some work in the park for the deer,\u201d Mayor Alessandrini said. \u201cThe deer were interbred. But I don\u2019t think that we should kill them all at one time. And that\u2019s what\u2019s gonna happen.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Friends of Iron Mountain City Park Member Caroline Sullivan says she\u2019s also disappointed by the decision. Sullivan and Mayor Alessandrini say they were hopeful the help they received from various groups would be enough to keep the pen open.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cHe got help from the labor union,\u201d Sullivan said. \u201cAnd everything for us to save this, and it got voted down.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Iron Mountain City Manager Jordan Stanchina acknowledges the donations would help for a one-time payment, but it would not be enough for the long run. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.uppermichiganssource.com\/2025\/06\/03\/usda-report-highlights-issues-with-iron-mountain-deer-pen\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.uppermichiganssource.com\/2025\/06\/03\/usda-report-highlights-issues-with-iron-mountain-deer-pen\/\">Last year, the USDA deemed the pen not up to the organization\u2019s standards.<\/a> In order to update the pen, it would cost the city around $22,000 dollars.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cA majority of that one-time cost would\u2019ve probably been donated, but then there was an annual cost associated with that going forward for feed and veterinarians care,\u201d Stanchina said. \u201cWhich was estimated to be approximately $16,000 for the current year.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Because the deer were interbred, Sullivan says she understands releasing them into the wild would not be feasible, and the deer had no skills to survive in the wilderness. However, she and Mayor Alessandrini say they are both sad to know the decision came down to financial costs to keep the pen running.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2026 WLUC. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"IRON MOUNTAIN, Mich. (WLUC) &#8211; For 75 years, the Iron Mountain City Park has allowed visitors to observe&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449860,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51],"tags":[110294,211146,102508,79,201],"class_list":{"0":"post-449859","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-city-park","9":"tag-deer-pen","10":"tag-iron-mountain","11":"tag-science","12":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449859\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}