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Re: Deer management

From:

Gail Mackiernan

Reply-To:

Gail Mackiernan

Date:

Fri, 10 Jul 2009 12:47:36 -0400

Rock Creek Park is in Washington DC and also a National Park, so any
perceived failure on the part of the Maryland Dept. of Natural Resources
regarding deer populations (cited by an earlier post) has no bearing. There
is no hunting in National Parks and although coyotes occur in very low
numbers in RCP, they have no real effect on the adult deer, feeding mainly
on road kill.

Anyone such as myself, who has birded regularly there over the past decade
and a half, has seen the ever-increasing destruction of herbaceous
understory, lack of forest regeneration and loss of breeding forest birds
due to deer over-browsing.

Unpleasant as it might be, deer numbers have to controlled in some manner if
we want diverse native ecosystem to persist into the future, and lethal
means seem to be the only effective approach in most cases.

Enough said,
Gail Mackiernan
Silver Spring, MD


on 07/10/2009 11:10 AM, Bill Ellis at  wrote:

> The negative impact of deer browsing on understory makes this problem quite
> relevant to breeding birds and birders.
> 
> I strongly support deer culls in lieu of the more natural solution, which is
> restoration of the carnivores that are the natural predators of deer.  I
> encourage the donation of the resulting venison as well for food.
> 
> Bill Ellis 
> Eldersburg
> billellis
> At ellislist
> Dot com