Killing the Innocent with Ignorance

by Madeleine Kando

In July, the Massachusetts Senate passed the Environmental Bond Bill which will help protect the State's natural resources, which is a good thing. The bad news is, that the bill also includes a provision to authorize deer culling (a euphemism for killing), large amounts of deer.

In Section 43 of the bill it states that 'the department shall identify areas in which deer overpopulation is negatively impacting forestation, water resources or plant growth on department-owned land. The department shall also consult with the department of public health regarding the prevalence of tick-borne illnesses as a result of deer overpopulation.'

Deer, however, while they are big animals, cannot browse on anything much above six feet, so they cannot prosper in deep mature woods with a dense canopy and no understory. Therefore deer can not 'negatively impact forestation', let alone water resources. How much can deer drink, really?'

As far as 'the prevalence of tick-borne illnesses as a result of deer overpopulation,' the members of the Senate responsible for drafting Section 43 of the bill should have done their homework before sneaking it in.

It is true that Lyme disease is on the rise in the Northeast. Everyone knows at least one person who has or has had the disease. You get it when an infected deer tick bites you.

In the context of Lyme disease, the name 'deer tick' is a misnomer. They really should be called 'mice ticks', since they do not get infected feeding on deer but on small mammals. Even though deer can be host to hundreds of ticks, their system flushes out the bacteria very quickly and they therefore do not transmit the disease themselves. Small rodents, on the other hand, when infected, cannot get rid of the bacteria quickly enough, and when they get bitten by a tick, the disease is transmitted to the tick.

The problem is that these small rodents have lost their natural predator, the red fox. In a study conducted by Dr. Taal Levi, Deer, Predators and the Emergence of Lyme Disease, Dr. Levi hypothesizes that, because these small animals are prey, their abundance – and the spread of the Lyme disease bacteria within them – depends on the abundance of their predators. The red fox is, or rather was, the primary predator of these small, disease carrying mammals, but a major change in predator-prey interactions in North America over the last half-century has resulted in the dominance of a new top predator - the coyote. This happened, in turn, when the grey wolf virtually disappeared from the North American landscape.

Not only do coyotes prefer to feed on eastern cottontails and ground squirrels, rather than mice, they generally do not pack themselves as tightly into an area as foxes. You then loose a large number of predators and small rodents, that potentially can carry the Lyme disease bacteria, are free to multiply.

A computer analysis of known cases of Lyme disease and population data for red foxes in four states with a high prevalence of the disease: Minnesota, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Virginia, showed higher numbers of Lyme disease cases in places where there are fewer foxes. In contrast, they detected no significant relationship between numbers of deer and numbers of Lyme disease cases.

In other words, killing deer by the thousands will not protect humans from contracting Lyme disease. It will just be another excuse for hunters to kill and for residents to live under an illusion of safety. It will just add to the decimation of our already beleaguered wildlife. An environmental bill is the least appropriate place to sanction large-scale wildlife killing.

If you live in Massachusetts, please call Governor Patrick right away and ask him to veto Section 43 of Bill H 4375. Call here: 617-725-4005. We also ask you to leave a written message here: http://www.mass.gov/governor/constituentservices/contact.

For more information contact the Massachusetts Animal Rights Coalition at: info@massanimalrights.org

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sources: Deer, predators, and the emergence of Lyme disease
Killing deer not the answer to reducing Lyme Disease, says HSPH scientist