deer ticks and dying woods
For those of us who live in some suburban or rural areas infested with white tailed deer, Lyme ticks and deer depradation and road kills, are nothing new. We have learned to live with the miseries of repeated antibiotic treatments to prevent the eventual devastating consequences of Lyme disease and its even worse concomitants, Ehrlichiososis and Babesiosis.
But what most people do not know is that the overabundance of deer has been having an increasingly destructive effect on the long term survivability of our woods in New England and elsewhere. Whereas 30 or 40 years ago one could walk in the woods and hardly ever see a deer, that was obvious in hindsight, because the understory of the forest was densily grown with all kinds of plants from ferns to laurels. etc. Today one can see clear through the woods as far as the terrain allows. There is no necessary understory left containing new tree growths, or the flora in which small ground animals nest and incubate their offspring.
Various state departments of environmental protection have done admirable work researching this problem during the past 10 plus years. But there is still a lot of resistance to taking effective action from the side of people who look at many animals anthropomorphically with the result that unpleasant facts are ignored and governments, often local, are thwarted in their efforts to do something about it. Every conceivable technique of deer herd reduction has been studied and tried, from contraception to herding and transporting to mice control. Unfortunately, none of these approaches work and only good hunting, whether with bow and arrow or rifle can do the job. When it is understood that there are areas in the country where deer density is more than 100 animals per square mile while only 5 to 7 per square mile can be supported by the forest habitat, it is clear that we have reached a point where something serious has to be done, particularly because deer proliferate at the phenominal rate of 15% per year.
Please support the efforts of state and local governments to lengthen the hunting seasons, eliminate the ban on Sunday hunting and donate your time and money to help the people who are spending untold leisure hours in the woods trying to catch a deer.
But what most people do not know is that the overabundance of deer has been having an increasingly destructive effect on the long term survivability of our woods in New England and elsewhere. Whereas 30 or 40 years ago one could walk in the woods and hardly ever see a deer, that was obvious in hindsight, because the understory of the forest was densily grown with all kinds of plants from ferns to laurels. etc. Today one can see clear through the woods as far as the terrain allows. There is no necessary understory left containing new tree growths, or the flora in which small ground animals nest and incubate their offspring.
Various state departments of environmental protection have done admirable work researching this problem during the past 10 plus years. But there is still a lot of resistance to taking effective action from the side of people who look at many animals anthropomorphically with the result that unpleasant facts are ignored and governments, often local, are thwarted in their efforts to do something about it. Every conceivable technique of deer herd reduction has been studied and tried, from contraception to herding and transporting to mice control. Unfortunately, none of these approaches work and only good hunting, whether with bow and arrow or rifle can do the job. When it is understood that there are areas in the country where deer density is more than 100 animals per square mile while only 5 to 7 per square mile can be supported by the forest habitat, it is clear that we have reached a point where something serious has to be done, particularly because deer proliferate at the phenominal rate of 15% per year.
Please support the efforts of state and local governments to lengthen the hunting seasons, eliminate the ban on Sunday hunting and donate your time and money to help the people who are spending untold leisure hours in the woods trying to catch a deer.
posted by Schaesberg at 7:48 AM
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