Deer Hunting

Won’t Reduce Lyme Disease

To the Editor:

Though the Newtown Board of Selectmen are poised to initiate a slaughter of deer on the advice of the Fairfield County Municipal Deer Management Alliance, the goals which they seek — a reduced number of deer and a lessened threat of Lyme disease — are unlikely to be realized since hunting has not proven to be a successful remedy to either problem.

While Lyme disease is indeed a concern to Newtown residents, killing deer will not reduce the incidence of the disease. The tick that transmits Lyme disease lives on deer while in its adult form, but it bites people when it is in its nymph stage — the stage that does not feed on deer. According to the Centers for Disease Control, there is no evidence that people can contract Lyme disease directly from wildlife.

The American Lyme Disease Foundation states that white-footed mice, not deer, serve as the principal “reservoirs of infection” on which many larval and nymphal ticks become infected with the Lyme disease spirochete. The foundation advises that the best way to prevent the disease is to check oneself for ticks daily if living in an area where Lyme outbreaks have occurred, and it does not recommend hunting to combat the disease. Since it is more likely that people contract Lyme disease from their cats and dogs, it is important that companion animals who are allowed outdoors regularly be kept up to date on prophylactic tick treatments.

Just as hunting is unable to prevent the spread of Lyme disease, it is likewise unable to reduce the deer population. Biologist Rawley Cogan was quoted in the Buffalo News: “My job is to show the public that hunting is a tool that can actually improve the herd’s size and health.” In the December 2005 issue of the Central New York Outdoor Journal, biologist Gary Alt says that state wildlife agencies have responded to hunters who ask for more deer to kill but they have ruined the forest in the process. With scientific studies showing that deer reproduce at a greater rate after being hunted (Richter, Andreas R. and Labisky, Ronald F. Reproductive Dynamics Among Disjunct White-tailed Deer Herds in Florida, Department of Wildlife and Range Sciences, School of Forest Resources and Conservation, University of Florida, Gainesville, 31 January 1985), killing deer to reduce their populations is largely a myth.

Ever since the US Fish and Wildlife Service reported that the number of hunters in Connecticut has declined by more than 44 percent since 1996, hunting agencies and advocacy groups have brought the Lyme disease bogeyman out from under the bed to frighten the public into accepting expanded hunting programs. Hunting cannot help with Lyme disease or with the deer population — it only helps those who exploit wildlife for recreation or profit. To learn what you can do to stop the expansion of hunting in Newtown and throughout the nation, visit www.AbolishSportHunting.com.

Joe Miele

President

The Committee to Abolish Sport Hunting

Las Cruces, NM                                                        December 12, 2008