Transcript:

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Deer populations throughout the northeastern United States are on the rise, and how to best control them has become an issue of concern. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.

ambience: deer

We’re listening to sound made by white-tailed deer.

“It’s safe to describe the entire population of white-tailed deer in the eastern United States as vastly overcrowded.”

Richard James is executive director of the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education in Philadelphia.

“The overpopulation of deer is considered by some people to be a blessing because they’re very attractive animals. People who don’t like them find them to be a nuisance because they eat everything in sight. Deer also make themselves popular with farmers by simply eating up an entire field of corn at night.”

It hasn’t helped the deer’s image any to be considered a contributing cause to an increasing number of highway traffic accidents. And to make matters worse, deer are also carriers of the ticks that transmit Lyme’s disease. But with the population on the rise, how can we manage deer in the future?

“I don’t see the white-tailed deer population vanishing because of any pressures from us. What I do see coming up is some kind of an accommodation. But that accommodation initially is going to include some killing on our part, the human being reverting to character. We may kill by gunfire, we may kill by culling, we may treat them as a source of urban food. They could well be a major meat source, protein source for many cities. We may also try biological warfare: a bacterium, a virus that is specific for white-tailed deer, is not transmittable to other wildlife forms, but will control the population with fairly dramatic results, but without all the awful and unnecessary blood spilling that one would associate with hunting the deer to control them. I suspect that’s what the future is.”

Pulse of the Planet is presented by the National Science Foundation.

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