A Wildlife Article from All-Creatures.org

Humane Deer Control? Don't Buy the Myth

From Lee Hall, Vegan Place Blog
May 2023

Why should humans justify substituting ourselves for the natural cycle of life and death? A natural balance resists our intermeddling. It requires thriving populations of carnivorous, omnivorous, and herbivorous animals. Let them be! Deer do not need human management and control in ecosystems where wolves or coyotes and bobcats flourish. Let them flourish!

John Royle, Unsplash

Everywhere humans aim weapons at deer, there are also the calls for a different style of erasure: capture and contraception.

The contraception debate asks how animals will be controlled. The assumption it accepts? That they will be controlled.

When advocates become invested in unnatural "solutions" they enter that perpetual struggle to become consultants in animal-control planning, while insisting that the supposed lesser evil is helping animals. The deer, who don't consent to any of these projects, are caught in a tug-of-war over which is the better deer-erasure method in a given situation.

I regard this as parallel to the Humane Myth of agribusiness. Only here, the supposed lesser evil is pharmaceutical control.

To my mind, forced contraception disrespects deer and their biological communities.

Why should humans justify substituting ourselves for the natural cycle of life and death? A natural balance resists our intermeddling. It requires thriving populations of carnivorous, omnivorous, and herbivorous animals. Let them be! Deer do not need human management and control in ecosystems where wolves or coyotes and bobcats flourish. Let them flourish!

In a nutshell: Instead of promoting the chemical erasure of generations of deer, advocacy would be better served by cultivating respect for wolves, coyotes, and undomesticated cats.

At the end of the day, if everyone agrees that the deer require human supervision and control, who champions the interest of deer in living free of our heavy hands?Who makes a holistic argument to respect animals' co-evolution in a given place over the centuries? Veganism, by definition, respects the interest of nonhuman animals to experience their natural course of evolution.

A MORSEL OF GOOD NEWS: I had an opportunity to weigh in when local Quakers deliberated on whether to allow Radnor Township to impose its deer control methods on the meetinghouse property in Villanova, Pennsylvania. I'm pleased to report that the Quaker community, mindful of its peace testimony, has told the township no.

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