Group urging program to cull deer

Odds are if a Connecticut resident falls prey to an animal, it won’t be from an attack by a shark, bear, copperhead or mountain lion. It will be a deer.

Deer, according to a group trying to control the animals’ numbers, can be the cause of death to motorists in the region or they can be the source of chronic illness by spreading Lyme disease.

Either way, according to the Fairfield County Deer Management Alliance, Bambi’s image is nothing to fawn over.

The alliance aims to blunt what it feels are the dangers posed by large numbers of deer in the region by encouraging hunting — by professional sharpshooters or sportsmen. The group’s goal is to get the population of deer reduced to the point where Lyme disease will be eradicated and vehicle-vs.-deer accidents will be greatly reduced.

According to the alliance, there are far too many deer for the suburban environment to support.

The alliance is also sponsoring a study in 15 Fairfield County communities to determine the density of the deer tick population and the percentage infested with Lyme disease. “People don’t understand the threat posed by the excess numbers of deer,” said Dr. Georgina Scholl, the alliance vice chairwoman and spokeswoman, who maintains that Lyme disease can be eradicated in the state if deer numbers are brought under control.

Scholl said that she plans to meet with Gov. M. Jodi Rell in January to discuss the need to cull deer around the state.

She said that she hopes to convince Rell

that deer are a health threat not unlike polio or rats, and that extreme and more creative measures are needed to tackle the problem. According to the alliance, there are between 60 and 100 deer per square mile in Fairfield County, but the group contends that about 10 per square mile would be the ideal.

“Tucking our trousers into our socks hasn’t worked — we’ve tried that and Lyme numbers keep going up,” she said.

Randall Nelson, the expert on zoonotic, or animal-borne, illnesses for the state Department of Health, said that in Connecticut, there were 1,788 reported cases in 2006, and 355 in Fairfield County.

“There’s no question — we have a lot of tick-borne illness in the state,” he said, adding that the actual number of Lyme cases is much greater, owing to under-reporting of the disease.

But, he said, culling the deer population “is a wildlife-management issue” and doesn’t fall under the area of the state health agency.

Weighing in on the issue from a different perspective are animal-rights advocates, who say the threat posed by deer is overstated by the pro-hunting lobby.

“The problem is not too many deer, it’s too many Homo sapiens,” said Priscilla Feral, executive director of the Friends of Animals, based in Darien.

“The overpopulation of the planet is the reason behind every ecological disaster in the world today,” she said.

Howard Kilpatrick, the DEP’s wildlife specialist and deer expert, said that to reduce deer numbers, communities, and ultimately, private property owners “have to agree to allow hunting on their properties.”

He said that the DEP can issue a special sharpshooter’s permit that, in effect, takes the “sporting” nature out of the deer hunt by permitting out-of-season hunting, night hunting, the use of “jacklighting” and other techniques.

“The idea is to harvest as many as possible,” he said.

Experts agree that culling the deer herd would reduce the incidence of Lyme disease. But there are a number of impediments to achieving this goal. These include:

- A general lack of awareness of the connection between deer and Lyme disease.

- Fewer active hunters over the years, and the fact that hunters are, on average, getting older, and fewer children are taking up the sport.

- The density of development in many Fairfield County towns, such as Greenwich and Darien, is often too close for hunting but perfect for deer procreation.

- Natural predators of deer, such as bears, wolves, mountain lions and bobcats, are more or less absent from lower Fairfield County

In 2005, Greenwich hired a sharpshoooter to cull deer numbers. Eighty animals were shot, but the program was not renewed.

by: JOHN BURGESON from The Connecticut Post