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After hearing passionate testimony from differing views on the annual county-run deer hunt in South Mountain Reservation, Maplewood's Township Committee voted to go forward with the deer hunt. Reflecting concerns about the hunt, Maplewood Mayor Vic De Luca voted cast the sole dissenting vote.
Officials painted the hunt as regrettable but necessary. The deer, they emphasized, are overpopulated and consequently tearing apart the forest's flora and fauna. Officials and supporters presented evidence demonstrating how plant life has dramatically improved as a result of controlling the deer population and other efforts by government workers and volunteers.
Committee Votes Yes to Deer Culling
Seeded on Wed Oct 7, 2009 11:52 AM EDT
Article Source: maplewood.patch.com- Enjoy this article? Help vote it up the 'Vine.
- Public Discussion (3)
Ah, the realm where pro-animal and pro-environment clash. Being a resident of New Jersey and seeing all the corpses of large animals (primarily deer and raccoon) littering our highways, as well as the obvious damage of a serious overpopulation of deer, even in our city environments, it is a humane thing to cull the deer population. The natural predators of deer have been very effectively decimated here and so only humans remain to fill that natural order of things. As emotionally attached to Bambi as we are, it is still necessary to thin the herds, otherwise the damage will be horrible.
- 1 vote
#1 - Wed Oct 7, 2009 12:15 PM EDTThe damage is already quite horrible, though being a regular user of this particular park I can say that the efforts of the hunt the last few years has been working as the population is already visibly lower. A few years back I couldn't take an afternoon walk without seeing deer a few times. Now either the populations are down or they've learned to hide but I only see them every few times I go out. This fight will get interesting once one side or the other latches moves to the "we've done enough" argument.
As for humans, I think we'll have to deal with wild turkey [mmmm] and stray cat [awww.. cute!] populations first.
- 1 vote
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