Letters to the Editor: Deer at Point Reyes

Deer at Point Reyes

Editor,

Our club's leadership has endorsed the National Park Service's plans to completely exterminate the 850 Fallow and 350 Axis Deer from the Point Reyes National Seashore because they are "not natives".

After being here for over a half century, these beautiful animals have become a fully naturalized part of this park's ecosystem. At present population levels they present no measurable threat to the environment or any other species. But as with the native blacktail deer, if these animals ever do become so populous that their numbers need controlling, the herds should be managed, not exterminated. Modern dart-gun administered contraceptive techniques are but one of the tools available for this purpose.

We cannot return to some pre-Columbian Garden of Eden. This "natives only" mentality is a bit of bureaucratic ideology that makes no sense at all; particularly for public lands near civilization. Wild mustangs, honey bees, cows and Sierra Club back-packers are also not native to this part of the world, but they are with us whether we like it or not.

Richard Kirschman

Response from Gordon Bennett, chair of the Sierra Club Marin Group.

My West Marin neighbor Richard has an artist's eye for beauty. But Richard's exotic deer, like the flowers of Scotch broom, are beauties with a dark and deeply destructive side.

The exotic deer in the park are escapees from a former hunting ranch, but they are now tearing up salmon spawning beds and riparian bird nests that native deer do not damage.

The exotic deer are voracious consumers of the forage that the park's native deer and elk depend on. Scientists estimate that upwards of 30% of the park's native deer have been starved out by these exotic beauties.

These exotic deer have been introduced on almost every continent and have huge worldwide populations; there is no threat whatsoever that these species face extermination. Richard has the truth reversed: these exotic deer are wreaking death and destruction on endangered fish and birds whose populations are on the brink.

Protection of endangered species is no mere bureaucratic ideology, but a key part of the National Park Service's fundamental mission, as mandated by federal law. Indeed "we cannot return to some pre-Columbian Garden of Eden," but we need to protect and restore what we can.

The Park Service's ecosystem scientists have concluded that only complete removal of the non-native deer will effectively protect the ecosystem in the long run. The Park Service's wildlife scientists have thoroughly studied contraception and concluded that a 100% reliance on it is currently neither feasible nor effective, and it is not certain that it will ever become so.

What is certain is that the Park must begin efforts to permanently halt the destruction that these exotic deer, no matter how beautiful to some, are doing to Point Reyes' biodiversity.