The Shenandoah National Park in recent years has endured an explosion of it's white tailed deer population. The pressing issue of controlling its deer population has been at the fore front of the parks management agenda. The rapid explosion of the deer population has lead to a lot of problems including, over browsing of native forest, which furthermore alters the native forest make up. The over population of deer is more than likely linked to a decrease of natural predators and the presence of an unnatural food source, i.e. human feeding. The presence of this human feeding alters the deer's lifestyle, making them depended on supplemental feeding, this leads to deer outgrowing there natural carrying capacity. Measures have been taken to reduce human feeding of deer, but have failed. If we look at are state's neighbor Maryland, to the north, we can see a great approach of controlling deer population in a national park. The Environmental Impact Statement which had to be made for the lethal method of taking deer in that particular park proved that it was the most effective and humane way of controlling its deer herd. So, why not just have qualified hunters do the management for the park?
The main objection for allowing management hunts to occur in a national park has to do with conflicting environmental views. The national park system view is mainly preservation, with a more holistic management approach. If management hunting was allowed it would be a more conservative approach, which tends to be lumped in with the view of resource management. I would argue that the Shenandoah National Park has practices already in place that look very similar to resource management, because not only do they allow fishing within the park, but also they allow visitors/users to extract the fish from the park. Is this not a form of resource management? If so, why not allow a system of management hunts to control its over populated deer population? Time and time again hunting has been the only effective and efficient tool for controlling deer numbers.
My suggestion is to allow management bow hunts to serve as a tool for deer population control, on the Shenandoah National Park. Bow hunting is one of the safer hunting alternatives, due to the public safety concern of visitors within the park. We need only to look at Virginia's own urban archery program to understand the safely aspect of hunting within a human populous setting. Dr. Jim Parkhurst (of Virginia Tech), is Virginia's statewide coordinator for the urban archery season; supports my point of viewing hunting as the only effective way of managing deer numbers in a populous setting. My point on the issue is simple, something has to be done about SNP's outrageous deer population; hunting can serve as a efficient, effective, and safe way of sustaining the parks environmental integrity, by reducing deer numbers to a sustainable level.
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I agree that controlled hunting may be the only way to shrink the deer population in the short run, but ultimately we should be looking at the root of the problem, which this author mentioned: loss of natural predators. Where have their natural predators gone? If they have been over-hunted or even exterminated due to livestock reasons or human danger, then maybe we should reconsider our past actions and perhaps stop disrupting the natural cycle. I think we need to step out of the circle of life, not in it more (with hunting) if we ever want to truly achieve balance, which a national park especially should encompass.
ReplyDeleteLast thing, when and who gets to make this decision? is it in the hands of the park managers or the state? and when will the verdict be known?
ReplyDeleteI am against hunting in United States National Parks. Hunting is only a short term goal. I took Ecology last year, and the big point that people need to realize is that the deer population was controlled by natural means before we started interfering with their environment and food webs. Prior to our excessive urban sprawl and the construction of fences around small patches of protected area, deer population was controlled by their natural carrying capacity. If living conditions were good, and the population surpassed the carrying capacity, the population would be naturally limited through competition, and the population would become very small and resources would build up again. Now, we are destroying the food chains, messing up their environments, and adding all of these outside factors such a humans feeding these increasingly tamed animals in National Parks. Humans are the root of the problem, we need to let the deer be and help get them back to their natural cycling if we want to stop their overpopulation and destruction.
ReplyDelete-Alyssa Cultice
I feel like hunting would be a great way to reduce deer population numbers. First of all, I feel like introducing natural predators, like mountain lions, would be bad due to the amount of people visiting these locations. I agree that we are the reason for the deer overpopulation but the interaction with deer at national parks is a big attraction. I see no harm in allowing a specified number of hunters to harvest some deer to help reduce the population. Also there is an organization called "Hunters for the Hungry" that could benefit from hunters harvesting excess deer.
ReplyDeleteI agree that hunting is an excellent short-term solution to the problem of over-populating large herbivores in the United States. In some areas, especially those east of the Mississippi River, hunting is the sole form population control for deer, elk, and other species. However I believe that, if we can ever hope to restore balance to the various forests and prairies within our borders, it is absolutely crucial that we reintroduce large predators. It is obvious that in some areas, due to urban sprawl and other factors, that this would at best be impractical. But their are still large tracts of untouched forestland (Daniel Boone National Forest, for example), would make an ideal habitat for wolves, cougars, and other animals. The belief that reintroducing these species into frequently visited parks is a bad idea is unfounded; wolves have been present in Yellowstone National Park, one of the most visited nature preserves in the world, for more than a decade without incident. Besides, brown and black bears have lived in our National Parks for years, and they are much more aggressive animals than wolves.
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