IDA Blog

Westchester County, NY, a quiet suburb just north of New York City, has implemented a plan to kill deer using bows and arrows in several county parks.

I attended a meeting last Thursday, November 12, that was set up to explain to county residents why this slaughter is necessary. It seems we have lost biodiversity and now we must kill the deer to regain it.Here’s how it works. Once upon a time, before 1800, we lived in an idyllic landscape consisting of approximately 15 deer per square mile. Then the human species got busy, clear cutting the forests and killing predatory species like wolves and coyotes. Deer, too, were virtually wiped out by 1850.

But when all the farmers who had clear cut the lands started moving west, the forests returned. Some people decided it would be good to reintroduce the deer. So with no human or animal predators and the forests a-flourishing, the deer proliferated.

Now, however, we must kill them for decimating the forest floor, along with Mrs. Smith’s tulips. You see, even though humans have turned the entire ecosystem on its head, we are indignant that we can’t enjoy all the same plant species that were here 100 years ago. That’s where the biodiversity part comes in. Our forests don’t look like we want them to. So in order to restore biodiversity, we must kill deer to return their population to that elusive 15 per square mile (even though there is some belief that it is below this number in many areas of Westchester) and, in so doing, we will reverse all the turmoil that has resulted from our housing developments, golf courses, strip malls, and decimation of a bevy of larger species.

Some people are not buying this argument. We question how a plan for single species management can possibly offset all the other variables that have already been tampered with in the environment. One panel speaker, a representative from the Humane Society of the U.S., offered a refreshing opposition to killing deer, and pointed out that our forest floor may look different today because forests go through stages. Old growth forests have a dense canopy with little light that doesn’t permit the kind of ground cover we think we should have. In other words, the natural world we covet may in fact be more fiction than fact.

It turns out that killing deer as a management solution is not without its problems. For one thing, there is a demonstrated rebound effect whereby deer fertility will balloon in response to decline in species numbers. In a short time, we will be back where we started. That’s the thing about nature. It really was set up to keep things in order, despite human intervention.

Worse still, with an average population density of 2,134 human inhabitants per square mile, Westchester County, it turns out, is a poor choice for hunting of any sort.  Our public officials acknowledge that, yet they also quickly dismissed non-lethal forms of deer management. Can they really believe that biodiversity will return at the expense of rationality?

Westchester County is not alone. Scores of communities throughout the U.S. are dealing with the new face of suburban hunting. As human populations grow, and as deer are forced to live in increasingly limited habitat, deer-human conflicts will rise. But killing deer with guns or arrows doesn’t work in the long run, and is hardly a viable option in areas of high human population. To think that killing deer in our county parks will restore forest biodiversity is a fairy tale. We need real world solutions, and we need to develop ways to co-exist with nature in an increasingly modified world.

This is the new face of human-wildlife interactions that will only increase as we go forward. IDA’s plea is for a sane plan that respects and tolerates the natural world, including its nonhuman inhabitants. This is our challenge—indeed it is our mandate, and with the help of compassionate people everywhere, we will work to get it accomplished.

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