From Dan Cristol’s monthly column in the Virginia Gazette, 10/2/2022
“Deer are graceful and beautiful animals and native inhabitants of Virginia’s forests. They were hunted nearly to extinction by 1900, but have slowly recovered as a result of habitat management, reduced hunting, and natural reforestation. Their recovery has been so successful that populations in most places are 10 times what they were historically. Their overabundance is the result of warmer winters, a paucity of predators, reduced popularity of hunting by suburbanites, and the alteration of our landscape into a cornucopia of delicious suburban yard preserves.
“As deer have become overabundant, one-third of our birds have disappeared.”
Read the whole column here.
