The Potomac Highlands Watershed School
Oh Deer! Environmental Forum 2008 Consensus Position Statements |
Consensus Hampshire High School
Petersburg High School Consensus Class: Biology Teacher: Dr. Sharon Harman
Plan of consensus 2008 Class: Environmental Science Teacher: Laura O'Leary
In recent years the deer population has exploded. This has affected many aspects of typical human life including farming, driving, insurance rates, homeownership, and forest management. The deer population needs to be controlled in order to bring balance to the environment. Our class had six stakeholder groups to reach a consensus that we all had to agree on. The six stakeholder groups were the forest, ecosystem, foresters, hunters, farmers, insurers and PETA. We as a class discussed many ideas to control the over populated deer, of course when you have a class discussion there is agreeing and disagreeing, but in the end we came to a decision that pleased all stakeholder groups. One of the ideas we had to control the over populated deer is to reintroduce predators, such as wolves. All the groups but the farmers agreed to reintroduce wolves. As we discussed the positives and negatives of reintroducing predators we came to a compromise with the farmers. What was suggested was that the farmers be compensated for the lost/killed livestock and provided funds to fence off land. It was also noted that an intensive education campaign be implemented to teach the public about predators. Never before in our generation have people lived alongside natural predators. Even the great environmental writer Henry David Thoreau believed that “In wildness is the salvation of the world.” Education will be required to inform the public of coexisting with natural predators. Types of education would include commercial, posters, and radio. Through education the public will learn the benefits of living along side natural predators and help to pacify their fears of “the big bad wolf.” Another idea was to extend the hunting season by two months and increase bag limits to see if we can get control of the deer population. PETA was the only stakeholder group to disagree with the extension of the hunting season they also did not like the increase of bag limits. They wanted sterilization as an option. It was agreed that research will be conducted on sterilization and a study be done to determine the effectiveness of extending the hunting season. PETA wanted to do research before the extension of the hunting season and after the extension to see if the idea of an extension of the hunting season was effective. This was agreed on as a compromise. Our last idea was to research the expense of the sterilization which means that the female deer will not be able to reproduce. This will limit the amount of the deer population also we will be only sterilizing the adults not the fawns. So that not all female deer would be able to reproduce. The cost of the sterilizing and how many deer would be sterilized would have to be taken into account. The above three actions will prove to be effective in managing the over population of deer. Working with members of each stakeholder group, we have compromised to form the above management plan.
Consensus Plan Hampshire High School Class: Environmental Science - HHS2 Teacher: Bill Moore
"There has
been plenty of evidence that the deer population in this region of North
America is too high. Such evidence includes animal vs. vehicle crashes.
Others include loss of vegetation and crops. To ensure the deer
Consensus Plan Hampshire High School Class: Environmental Science - HHS3 Teacher: Bill Moore
Our class
concluded that the population of the deer is too high, and should be
lower. The class thinks that the deer population should be lowered by
killing the deer, which we think will be very effective. Also the class
Consensus Plan Hampshire High School Class: Environmental Science - HHS4 Teacher: Bill Moore Because of
the climbing deer population our forests have been in decline.
Deer like to eat the saplings and the underbrush of our forests
horrendously diminishing the secondary succession of the forest. The
future generation of our forest depends on how we regulate the ever
climbing deer population. We believe that in order to regulate the deer
we would have to bring in certain predators of the deer that would
effectively reduce the deer number and also un-harm the underbrush.
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