Ottawa Hills is home to about 80 white-tailed deer, which some residents complain pose a nuisance to their manicured gardens and roadways. They want to address that problem by repealing a village ordinance that prohibits hunting and fishing on public land and allowing the village to adopt a bow-hunting program to control the deer population.
A proposal to do these things appears on this fall’s general-election ballot. But until Ottawa Hills exhausts reasonable, nonlethal methods to control its deer population, carrying out a potentially hazardous hunting program to solve a largely aesthetic problem appears unjustified. The Blade recommends a NO vote on Issue 13.
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In 2010, Ottawa Hills voters rejected a similar proposal to repeal the village’s ban on discharging firearms to cull deer. The current proposal is less extreme than open shooting but still poses a threat to public safety. Bow hunting also can be a cruel method of culling animals, resulting in painful and prolonged injuries before an animal succumbs to wounds.
Last June, the village’s wildlife management task force recommended managing the deer population through a controlled bow hunt and nonlethal methods, such as better fencing policies, conservation initiatives, and an enforced ban on feeding deer. Much of the nuisance problem created by deer can be controlled with nondeadly methods, the task force report concludes.
The village should pursue these options before repealing a well-founded, decades-old ban on hunting in Ottawa Hills. Since deer pose a relatively minor threat to life in Ottawa Hills and haven’t seriously injured humans in recent memory, permitting hunting in the densely populated suburb does not seem worth the risk.
Ottawa Hills’ deer dilemma isn’t imaginary. The village reports a few deer-vehicle collisions every year. There is an overpopulation of deer because their natural predators, such as cougars and wolves, have been eliminated. Their numbers may threaten other native plant and animal populations, the task force has warned.
Yet these issues appear to offer a poorly veiled pretext to cull the deer population because it creates an inconvenience for some residents of Ottawa Hills, and it obscures the fact that the real source of ecological disruption in the region has been humans, not animals. Any solution to the deer problem must be supported by legitimate biological concerns, not just the preferences of residents.
An occasional encounter with wildlife is the price residents should be willing to pay to live in forested regions rich in wildlife, such as northwest Ohio. Ottawa Hills must weigh the nonlethal options it has to control and adapt to its deer population. Until it does, residents should vote NO on Issue 13, an extreme and potentially harmful solution to wildlife control.
First Published October 8, 2015, 4:00 a.m.
