The Wildlife Society Blog points out that animal rights groups are suing NPS to prevent a deer culling at Valley Forge National Park. Apparently they have never driven through the park. There are way, way too many deer in Valley Forge National Park. On any given day, I would say I see more deer than people.
I do not approve of the methods that the NPS is employing to thin the population. I would much prefer that NPS use local hunters, as we have been doing in various township in my area. But something has to be done about the deer population in the park. It is obviously out of control for anyone who spends any time there. It’s particularly obnoxious that it’s a Connecticut based group that’s filing the suit. I would encourage anyone who ends up with a damaged car or hurt in an accident to send the animal rights whack jobs the bill.
The Tredyffrin Township [Tredyffrin is near Valley Forge] Police devote a couple pages of their annual report to deer (2007 can be found here http://www.tredyffrin.org/pdf/police/2007-annual-report.pdf — I can’t get 2008’s report to load). In that report they cite $400k in deer collision related damages and $440k due to crime (the population is 30k).
I grew up in Strafford in the 70s/80s and we rarely saw deer. By the time I moved out in the 90s deer were in our backyard daily and they were eating everything. My parents tried spraying the garden with coyote urine, adding anti-deer netting, and everything else you can imagine. Nothing worked.