Needed:

Hard Data On The Deer Issue

To the Editor:

There has been a lot of rhetoric recently, none of it substantiated by hard data, on the subject of deer overpopulation. The more the rhetoric and fear-mongering, the more inflammatory it becomes until people start believing that if we don’t do something very soon, deer dying from starvation will be littered all over our roads.

The suggestion is often made that the reason for an increase in deer numbers is the lack of a natural predator. If that were so, deer numbers would have dramatically increased at the beginning of the 20th Century, when the last wolves in Connecticut were killed. In fact, this did not happen and herd sizes have fluctuated from time to time, the numbers carefully managed by the state game agencies that issue hunting permits and change the number and sex of deer they allow to be “harvested” to keep the population relatively stable.

The elephant in the room is the fact that what has happened in the past 30 years is rapid land development, whereby a dramatic shift has taken place from farmland to subdivisions. Given the fact that deer reproductive rates are directly related to the amount of food in the environment, by actually increasing the amount of forest edge, the deer’s preferred food source, with each subdivision, we have literally invited the deer to increase in numbers. It is well documented that “culling” deer does nothing to lower herd numbers over time.

Communities where such “culls” have been instituted have provided no scientific data to support their claims that deer culls are an effective strategy for reducing Lyme disease, and at least one has shown that it is not effective. A deer “cull” is not like regular hunting. It involves an annual baiting of deer on open space and/or private land for a mass slaughter that takes place over a short period of time using both arrows and guns and methods which are neither humane nor even sportsmanlike. This is hardly how a civilized community should behave.

The Newtown Bee editorial (“Lyme Disease And Deer Management,” 12/24/2008) is both forward and backward looking. It is forward looking in mentioning that the proposed “task force” (actually Lyme and Tick Borne Illness Action Committee) could be a “measure of the integrity of our town.” It is, however, backward looking in saying that: “consideration must be given to how best to kill deer in a humane way,” when the debate on whether or not killing deer is an effective strategy for reducing Lyme disease and/or deforestation has yet to take place. Killing deer should not be the only option considered by the members of the committee. There are other methods of problem solving such as radical land use changes, deer contraception (there are many studies of this underway at present), ascaricide use to kill ticks on deer and mice, and public education about tick bite prevention, permitted flora, deer repellents, etc. In other words, a multipronged, scientifically-based, sensibly thought out plan.

Starlet Braden

17 Pocono Road, Newtown                                       December 30, 2008