Letter: Deer culls don’t work

Posted 1/19/23

Not mentioned in Bridget Irons’ important April 2022 letter about ending the unjust annual Wissahickon deer kill is that it doesn’t work.

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Letter: Deer culls don’t work

Posted

Not mentioned in Bridget Irons’ important April 2022 letter about ending the unjust annual Wissahickon deer kill is that it doesn’t work. The most significant population determinant of native white-tailed deer is food supply.  When some deer are killed, those remaining have more food to eat, which makes them have more babies. Although the killing temporarily reduces the deer population, it exacerbates the problem it claims to solve. More food means more deer.

Human beings, suffering from a delusion of superiority to other animals, believe they are entitled to “break ground” and cut down trees for houses, businesses, parking lots, schools, playgrounds, patios, swimming pools, sports fields, golf courses, lawns and gardens, etc.; destroying animals’ natural homes and killing, injuring, and displacing countless many. Fallout from so-called “development” is varied and widespread, but one result is more edge growth: low-growing vegetation that deer like to eat. Clearing land means a thinning canopy or none at all, allowing more sunlight to reach plants and shrubs on the ground, making them grow bigger faster. Again, more food, more deer.

The year is new, and with the world’s eye on exploitative practices and oppressive systems, institutions, and regimes long unchanged, those in our community (especially one-percenters living in gigantic houses in and along the park who pull strings and call shots) concerned with justice and wishing to do their part in making a better world right here at home might consider telling the Philadelphia Parks & Recreation Department to stop the killing because it’s morally wrong and it doesn’t work, anyway.

Sincerely,

Ben Lotka

Glenside