Issue link: http://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/742011
114 • S P O R T I N G C L A S S I C S are more of a threat to eastern forests than climate change. The responses to that reasoned and well- researched article were extraordinary. There were the predictable calls from one side for sterilizing does and reintroducing gray wolves up and down the Eastern Seaboard. (If they reintroduced wolves along Pennsylvania Avenue and on Capitol Hill where they might do some good, I'd be in favor of it.) On the other side, a hunter from Pennsylvania, which has some of the highest deer density-per- square-mile numbers of any state, wrote angrily that he went an entire season without seeing a single deer. One wonders in what part of the shopping mall he placed his deer stand. But it is typically and unfortunately representative of the way state fish and game agencies are whipsawed between irreconcilable extremes and unrealistic expectations. If these various state agencies were free of all the political, financial, and ideological pressure and the concomitant media frenzies those pressures create, the mule deer might continue its decline, but it could be slowed considerably. n the EPA and various other agencies, that in turn answer to whichever constituents scream the loudest and have the most money. At the other extreme are the states that allow any damn fool initiative to be placed in front of the public to be voted on by uneducated urban dwellers who think with their hearts instead of their heads. California's ban on mountain lion hunting is a good example at the state level, but it extends on down to local levels. In Marin County (California again, natch), cat lovers passed a law making it a crime to shoot a feral or loose domestic cat, never mind that the Audubon Society has stated that the single largest threat to migratory songbirds is cats allowed to run free, and their feral offspring. Narrowly crafted and narrow-minded laws and initiatives such as those protect one species at the expense of another; they do nothing for the balance of nature. A group of scientists and land managers working for the Nature Conservancy wrote an article arguing strongly that overabundant whitetail deer populations At the same time, more and more mule deer habitat was converted into farm land and crops that were unpalatable to mule deer, but favorable to whitetail. Now add overgrazing and invasive species of noxious plants, and the best we can hope for is that the mule deer is headed back down to pre-European numbers. So what can be done? I would suggest that our only good option is to leave game management to the professionals, and by professionals I mean qualified scientists and land management experts. State fish and game agencies have a good idea as to the carrying capacity of the land for each game species, and left to their own devices, they are capable of establishing harvest quotas based on the always delicate balance of nature, not on the expectations of any particular group or ideology. Unfortunately, state fish and game agencies are rarely left to their own devices. At one extreme is the Federal government, which passes sweeping, one- size-fits-all regulations based on findings of