Deer Hunters

Things are about to get ugly in the continuing battle against deer in my neck of the woods. Apparently, the herd of deer that inhabits Valley Forge Park numbers about 1,023 and is munching its way through most of the vegetation in the park. According to this report, Valley Forge officials plan to cull the herd by about 1,300 over the next four years using sharpshooters.

As you can well imagine, there are supporters on both sides of the issue. Park officials maintain that the deer have eaten so many shrubs, that the forest cannot regenerate. "Our goal is to restore a natural , healthy, functioning ecosystem," said Kristina Heister, park natural-resource manager. "We feel we need to act now, and we need to act quickly."

Opponents of the plan feel that natural selection is the best way to control the size of the herd and advocate letting nature take its course. "Free-living animals can control their numbers, and they do control their numbers," counters Lee Hall, legal director of the international advocacy group, Friends of Animals. "The best way to enable them to do this is to respect how they are, and where they are, because nature works."

White tailed deer seem to be everywhere these days, including my own back yard, although the dogs do keep them at bay. They are being displaced from their natural habitats by out incessant building, and the current housing bust may actually be a saving grace if we haven't already destroyed too much of their grazing grounds. To be fair, the ones in Valley Forge Park are especially immune to cars, humans and even some dogs. They just stand and look at you from about three feet away. These deer seem incredibly tame.

Which is why the uproar may be so loud. I guarantee that if these deer were frolicking through the forest underbrush and not blocking the roads or leaping in front of our cars at night, we would not even notice that some of them were gone. But when we see those seemingly innocent faces staring right back at us, well it seems to close for comfort.

I like deer just as much as the next person and I could never kill one myself. However, deer ticks are a serious issue for humans as well as other animals and I think we need to strike a balance between man and beast for the benefit of all. If there was a way to tranquilize the deer and transport them elsewhere, that would obviously be the best solution, but I just don't think it is economically viable. If there was a way to sterilize them, that might be another solution, but that is also tampering with nature.

The fact of the matter seems to be that the deer are thriving despite our damage to their natural environments. And they are thriving in habitats deprived of their natural predators because these habitats just happen to be national parks where people congregate. According to park officials, the 2007 total deer population was 193 per square mile, which exceeds scientific recommendations for forest regeneration.

It seems to me that, short of expanding the park, we need to limit the deer.