PACKET EDITORIAL, May 23
By:
You would think, from the tone of the rhetoric last Thursday on the floor of the New Jersey state Senate, that the good citizens of Princeton would be overwhelmed by gratitude, thankful that our representatives have sheltered us from the grotesque prospect of marauding bands of snarling, rapacious, assault-weapon-wielding Bambi-killers invading our suburban tranquility.
Why is it, then, that most folks around here seem bewildered — no, make that dumbfounded — that the Senate was unable to find the votes necessary to pass a sensible, responsible and desperately needed piece of legislation that would have allowed Princeton to do something about its out-of-control deer population?
Perhaps it’s because they recognize that the deer-management plans the legislation would have authorized — and may yet authorize, if the lawmakers ever come to their senses — reflect a much higher level of sensitivity, concern and caring for the well-being of those darling furry creatures than any of the empty alternatives advanced by those who purport to love animals.
We love animals. Most people in Princeton do. That is why we would prefer it if they weren’t running into our cars all the time. Or getting impaled on our fences. Or multiplying so fast that even our indulgent spending on bushes and hedges and vegetable gardens can’t keep pace with their appetites.
Let’s face it. From a human perspective, deer are pests — lovely, delicate, graceful, make-you-smile pests, to be sure, but pests just the same. They cause accidents that result in bodily injury, financial loss and, sometimes, death to both human and animal. They carry ticks that spread Lyme Disease. They destroy crops, not just the ornamental ones but the ones farmers plant to put food on the table.
It would be wonderful if herds of deer could roam freely without occasioning any of these unfortunate consequences. But there are, very simply, too many people and too many deer trying to occupy this densely populated region for both species to enjoy peaceful and incident-free coexistence. Something’s got to give — and, the world being the way it is, that something is the deer.
For years, thoughtful, reasonable people in places like Princeton have tried to find sensitive, humane ways to thin the deer herd. For a while, they focused on contraception, hoping a method could be found to innoculate does in order to reduce the birth rate over time. This turned out to be impractical, at least in the short term. So attention has turned to engaging professional sharpshooters, using high-powered rifles fitted with silencers, to kill deer at night. This ran afoul of state law — which is what the legislature was in the process of changing, with the governor’s blessing, until last Thursday’s surprise vote in the Senate.
Maybe it was the timing. A scant four days after the Million Mom March, with a gallery full of gun-control advocates looking on and an agenda packed with gun-control measures preceding the vote on the deer-management bill, this may not have been the most opportune time to ask senators to approve legislation allowing professionals to hunt down deer with firearms.
We’re not totally enamored of this solution ourselves. We wish someone would invent a method of bringing the deer population under control without having to kill any of them. Regrettably, nobody has. The animal-rights activists who warn of dire consequences if the deer-management bill is passed, and the senators who failed to support the bill last Thursday, offer emotional reactions but no reasonable alternatives to the herd-thinning methods contemplated in the legislation.
Another vote on this bill is scheduled in the Senate for June 8. We urge our lawmakers to let reason, not emotion, guide their actions. And we hope, not just for our sake but for the sake of the animals as well, that at least 21 of them — the number needed to get the bill passed and move it to Gov. Whitman’s desk for signature — will do the right thing.