Deer Culling Is Not A Practical

Solution To Lyme Disease

To the Editor:

I’m a Newtown resident concerned about Lyme disease and have been closely following the work of the Tick-Borne Disease Action Committee.

 Some have tried to argue that those opposing deer culls don’t understand the facts, that they’re emotional. But if you look at the science and the data, there is not a single study, aside from ones done on islands or geographically isolated areas, that shows any evidence that killing deer reduces tick-borne diseases. Every ecologically open community like Newtown that has tried to get rid of Lyme disease by killing deer has never been able to get deer densities low enough, even towns with very aggressive deer reduction efforts.

 In Newtown, the Connecticut DEP estimates we have 65–70 deer per square mile. Scientists suggest you have to get deer densities to 10–20 deer per square mile in order to affect tick-borne disease. To go from 65–70 deer per square mile to 10–20 would require killing thousands of deer. Given the animal’s rapid reproduction rates, the fact that there’s little public land on which hunting is a possibility, that you’re never going to get all the private landowners to agree to hunting, and that hunting is on the decline, is a plan that proposes reducing the deer herd in town by 3,000+ realistic? And at what cost, both financially and ethically? Deer culling is and will continue to polarize this community.

Instead of approaching the problem with bullets and arrows, why not work to educate residents on how to protect themselves from tick bites? Dr Kirby Stafford estimates that 75 percent of Lyme disease cases are contracted in one’s own backyard. Why not create an education program focused on personal protection at home? What about creating a landscape modification manual for homeowners to make their property less hospital to ticks? Studies have shown that Japanese barberry plants create furtive habitats for ticks. Why not approach the landscape trade, explain the connection to barberry plants and ticks and ask them to stop selling the plant, which also happens to be an invasive? 

 What about 4-Posters? Given all the positive scientific studies about their effectiveness in reducing ticks, it would be a great accomplishment if the Tick-Borne Disease Action Committee could persuade the Connecticut DEP to use the 4-Poster units here in town.

 Connecticut has the highest rate of Lyme disease in the country. As a resident of this town, I am glad to see we have a Tick-Borne Disease Action Committee to study the problem. But I urge this committee to pursue realistic, science-based solutions rather than blindly following other towns in Fairfield County that have instituted inhumane and costly deer culls. The science of the matter is simple: killing deer is not an effective solution to reducing tick-borne diseases in an ecologically open community like Newtown.

Lynn Printy

Boggs Hill Rd. Newtown                                             January 9, 2010