Sir, - Your recent report on the Fallow Deer of the Phoenix Park (June 25th) highlights once again the dilemma which face the park authorities in relation to the control of deer numbers. The deer population is currently at its highest level since 1942 when the park held as many as 1,000 deer, and a radical and unpopular, but overdue and in the long run, advantageous cull was executed (as it happens, mainly by this writers father).
The official cull figure at that time was 765 shot between august 1942 and February 1943, reportedly leaving just 38 deer for four bucks, 27 does and seven fawns. In fact, the cull may have been as high as 900, all shot in a five month period, and through an exceptionally harsh winter. At the time the cull excited much media attention and commanded front page space for some six weeks, notwithstanding an external "Emergency". Your own leader writers were greatly exercised by the matter (see The Irish Times of August 30th and September 5th, 1942, and later issues).
The reason for that cull was the same as that now prevailing - not so much "good husbandry" as poor management - a laissez faire approach which is as potentially harsh to the weak and disadvantaged in the world of wildlife as it is in economics or social policy. What is needed is a firm and decisive approach to the problem, which must involve some element of removal of deer, dead or alive. Since the 1942 cull, numbers have risen steadily and inexorably.
Although records between 1943 and 1980 arc somewhat scattered, it is known that up to the latter year 50 or so were typically lost to accidents every year; 189 were removed between 1979 and 1983 (that is, caught up and sold off in some cases to deer farms). A known 98 deer died in the park between 1982 and 1987, mainly from traffic accidents. No deer were officially removed between 1985 and 1992, when another 130 were removed, either as live sales or as TB reactor animals. A known number have been lost in the course of different catch up exercises conducted for purposes of research. In fact, I have calculated that as many as 900 deer that is, a figure equivalent to the entire present herd - may have been removed or otherwise lost between 1979 and 1995. Now we are told that casualties may be as high as 100 deaths a year due to increased traffic through the park.
Yet in spite of all that, the population is possibly about to exceed any previous ceiling in the modern history of the park, and may be as much as twice the "acceptable" or "natural" carrying capacity of the available area. Clearly some definite policy of pro active management is called for, and quickly, unless we are to witness an explosion of numbers which will be to the disadvantage of these precious animals, under several different headings. Public feeling must be made to acknowledge that some control is absolutely necessary, and that mere removal to a deer farm (to enjoy a short life of intensive breeding in a discredited industry before ending up as venison anyway) is at best a stop gap solution.
Another, more attractive, possibility is the relocation of live deer into the wild, provided such released deer don't represent an unacceptable threat to forestry or agricultural interests. Surely such a possibility is worth exploring at any rate? Once the resident population is reduced to an acceptable level it must thereafter be contained at that level. This will only be achieved by one of three ways (or maybe an amalgam of all three) annual or ongoing live catch up and removal, with attendant practical problems; contraception, posing certain ethical as well as practical problems (ethical only in the sense that contraception in this case is no less an interference with nature than shooting, just more "correct"); and finally, careful, safe and selective removal by shooting, with culling conducted according to a carefully drafted and regulated plan of management based on established precepts of herd structures and management.
Such herd control measures are well practised in many park situations outside Ireland, so why not in the Phoenix Park, where properly accredited marksmen can carry out the job carefully, safely and selectively, using well established and proven standards? Sadly, the alternative to such a measure is to risk witnessing once again the radical and unpleasant extremes undergone in 1942. In parkland as in the wild, efficient and caring management is the true key to conservation and health of deer. - Yours, etc.,
Wicklow Deer Conservation and Management Group,
Rochestown Avenue,
Dun Laoghaire.