Import cougars to deal with deer...

The reality is that the"natural" landscape in the U.S. has been altered significantly by humans, not just the Europeans (see "Jamestown: How John Rolfe, Tobacco and Worms Changed the Landscape of America" which discusses how earthworms weren't native to North America, but came from Europe via water used as ballast in ships) but beginning with the Native Americans.

Deer overpopulation in local parks has to be addressed because there are few predators in the parks, the deer reproduce and eat much of the natural vegetation, threatening the park landscape.

If you don't want shooting (by gun or arrows, see "Residents, activists slam Fairfax bowhunts for deer: 'Passionate response' at meeting leads to closure of park site" from today's Post), then you might need to import big game to do the job. See "A Deer jumps into lion's cage (VIDEO," about the deer-lion altercation at the National Zoo.

On the other hand, cougars and similar fauna (i.e. bears) create other conflicts in populated environments. See "Cougars Moving Into U.S. Midwest, Western Suburbs" from the National Geographic , "Police gun down cougar in Chicago alley" from USA Today (Associated Press story), and "Metro area suburbs suit these cougars" from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Also see:

-- "In defense of deer," a letter to the editor in the Gazette, in response to "Sligo Creek Park considers culling deer" from the last couple weeks. From the original article:

One day in 2007, after a morning spent at Sligo Creek Park removing invasive plants so the native plants could survive, Sally Gagne took a moment to relax and look back on the acre of parkland she had proudly worked on to save.

Her pride quickly turned to panic.

"I couldn't believe how little was left," said Gagne, a Silver Spring resident and founder of the Friends of Sligo Creek, a local citizens group dedicated to improving the quality of the Sligo Creek Watershed, which covers 11.6 square miles from Wheaton to Hyattsville. "There were very few young trees and even fewer native plants."

A new adversary – a rapidly increasing deer population in Sligo Creek – had gotten to the plot before Gagne could, eating all of the native plants and saplings. The deer problem was bad in 2007, Gagne said, and is even worse now. And for the first time, FOSC is debating whether to cull the deer population in Sligo Creek before the entire ecosystem is ruined.

"It will happen slowly, but the woods will be gone," said Gagne, who is also a former FOSC president. "The whole community of woods, the animals that live there and the birds that fly through."

-- "Deer Heaven: How Suburbia Became The Animals' Ideal Habitat" (April 2009, Washington Post)

-- "Too Many Deer in the Nation's Capital? Rock Creek Park Holds a Public Meeting" from the National Parks Traveler website

-- White-tailed Deer Management Plan and Draft Environmental Impact Statement, National Park Service, Rock Creek Park, Washington, DC -- note that the comment period is over.

I raise this because clearly this is an issue throughout the region, even though each jurisdiction (Fairfax County, Montgomery County, DC) and the residents seem to be considering the issue in isolation.

And yes, it is a planning issue, an urban planning issue, one of managing conflicts, between deer and people, deer and native plants, deer and other wildlife, and the role and place of parks within communities and regions.

Dan Gross/The Gazette. Cars stop to allow a deer to cross Beach Drive near Stoneybrook Drive in Kensington, which runs through Rock Creek Park. A deer-management program has been in place in the park since 2002, but a proposed program at Rock Creek Stream Valley Unit 2 in Chevy Chase still needs funding. A deer-management program has also been proposed for parts of the Sligo Creek Stream Valley.