Stop Deer Culling in Northeast Ohio

The city of Solon, Ohio spends more than $750,000 annually on deer culling, a practice in which about 300 animals are killed in an effort to control the population.  Aside from the obvious ethical issues associated with this practice, the reason that deer culling occurs annually is that it is simply not an effective means of population control.  Solon itself is a city with large roadways and a high population; however, it is located amid smaller towns and countryside where deer culling does not occur. Because these animals roam, there is, in fact, no way to control their numbers without some sort of reproductive suppressant.  Deer also have the biological ability to regenerate themselves under hunted conditions, meaning that doe will often attempt to reproduce in numbers equivalent to that of the community death toll.

Killing innocent animals so that humans can feel more comfortable driving their cars and planting their gardens is a disgrace.  Cities that conduct deer culling often attribute the high populations to a “lack of predation” and measure their numbers by square kilometers of inhabitable land. However, the reason that whitetail deer populations are unsustainable is because human beings have taken away their natural predators and have developed to such an extent that there is no longer a natural environment for the deer to live in. To add insult to injury, we murder hundreds of the animals a year and say we do it “for their own good” and so that they “don’t starve.”

The hypocrisy of this practice, of pretending to care about the well being of the deer and of the well-being of their ecosystems, is a convenient cover-up for the fact that deer are inconvenient to humans living in this area.  However, that does not justify the killing of hundreds of animals a year.  Sign this petition and tell the city of Solon, Ohio to stop the cruel and ineffective culling of local whitetail deer.

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