They are in Pa thanks to a strong push several years back from people/legislators in high places.

Administrators at the park say the hunt of 80% of the herd is necessary to ensure the forest’s survival,

Wednesday 18 February 2009

When drivers approach Pennsylvania’s Valley Forge National Historical Park from the south, they’re often greeted by hordes of attentive, long-eared hosts: Deer.

The animals don’t run from the noise of car engines. They don’t bolt at the prospect of human contact. They stand and stare. Soon those sentries may be gone.

This is no exaggeration! I live just on the outskirts of the Park. This whole area is a major Petting Zoo!

Technically, park administrators are considering four plans to manage deer, with options ranging from doing nothing to killing most of the herd. But they’ve already identified sharp-shooting as the best alternative.

Angry animal-rights activists insist that shooting the deer is unnecessary, unethical, and dangerous to nearby residents.

“Free-living animals can control their numbers, and they do control their numbers,” said Lee Hall of Devon, Pennsylvania, legal director of the international advocacy group Friends of Animals. “The best way to enable them to do this is to respect how they are, and where they are, because nature works.”

From 1997 to 2007, the herd grew from 772 to 1,023, peaking at 1,398 in 2003, according to a park environmental-impact study. The 2007 total was 193 deer per 2 sq km (1 square mile), which administrators say exceeds scientific recommendations for forest regeneration.

Already lost, Heister said, is what biologists call the forest understory, the saplings and small ground plants. If the situation continued unaltered over generations, what is now forest would become meadow.

Heister said the large number of deer raised the risk of chronic wasting disease in Valley Forge. The park study repeatedly cites the threat of the disease, a contagious neurological illness that kills deer and elk.

But there has never been a case of it in Pennsylvania. Infected herds were identified in West Virginia and New York four years ago. Park officials also note that there are, on average, 86 collisions between cars and deer in the park each year. More accidents occur on the park outskirts, and all are potentially deadly to drivers.

Hall, of the Friends of Animals, said the solution was to reduce speed limits, install asphalt speed bumps, and find other ways to restrain drivers, who often use park roads as shortcuts.

Bad news is, another idiot is being prepped for the position. Same antideer attitude and cut from the same ecoextremist cloth. They are determined to continue the grip on the majority of our game commission board.

Pa hunting is going down the toilet fast, and its all political nonsense causing it.

I do not personally know him and of course cannot speak for him, but it seems likely that he means that once the habitat has recovered from the severe over browsing that it should then be capable of supporting a larger number of deer than 15 per square mile. At one time the accepted figure was that woodlands could host 20 deer per square mile without being impacted. It seems likely that this is what he is referring to.

Of course you are right that if populations spiraled out of control once that they could easily do it again.

For the record I have heard a presentation by Mr. Krause and his assistants and saw the documentation which they presented, but it has been far enough in the past that I cannot quote anything said at the meeting.

I do recall that I was not totally convinced either way as to whether there were too many deer or not at Raystown and although I have seen the area, I have no on the ground experience there.