Did She Read It?

From ANIMAL PEOPLE, January/February 2000:

“Deer hunting kills birds,” an ANIMAL PEOPLE cover feature pointed out in March 1997, citing the loss of forest nesting habitat caused by deer overpopulation in Pennsylvania. ANIMAL PEOPLE explained that the Pennsylvania Game Commission annually sets hunting quotas to target bucks but spare does, to achieve rapid herd growth, and noted that the National Audubon Society, quick to blame cats for vanishing songbirds, had never fingered hunters’ demands for plentiful deer.

Pennsylvania Audubon Society executive director Cindy Dunn, however, sounded as if she’d read the article in a recent address to a deer management symposium in Media, Pennsylvania. Accusing Game Commission members of “getting their opinions from barroom biology,” Dunn blasted deer management policies favoring hunters who “would like to see a lot of deer in a short time,” and called hunting no solution to the loss of nesting habitat because, “You can shoot a lot of bucks without having any impact upon deer herd size.”