In the Mailbag

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1. The research team at Tufts Uni­ver­si­ty is hav­ing great suc­cess with the PZP con­tra­cep­tive vac­cine. I have been in con­tact with Dr. Allen Rut­berg, Direc­tor of the Cen­ter for Ani­mals and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy at the Cum­mings School of Vet­eri­nary Med­i­cine. He sent me a link about their work, in con­junc­tion with the Humane Soci­ety of the Unit­ed States (HSUS), to con­trol the deer pop­u­la­tion in the Vil­lage of Hast­ings-on-Hud­son, NY https://www.hastingsgov.org/deer-issues. Hunt­ing is not an ade­quate man­age­ment tool for con­trol­ling the deer pop­u­la­tion on San Juan Island, and some islanders may be opposed to the prac­tice or not be com­fort­able with hunt­ing in neigh­bor­hoods where the homes are clos­er togeth­er. Expand­ing hunt­ing to take does leaves fawns with­out their moth­er. While they are past the nurs­ing stage in win­ter, they do stay with their mom through the first year. If you are inter­est­ed in read­ing more about deer con­tra­cep­tion, please see the addi­tion­al links below. I’d like to see an effort to incor­po­rate the use of PZP as an added man­age­ment tool and believe that the cost could be off­set by com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers who advo­cate for a humane and sus­tain­able man­age­ment pol­i­cy. Cer­tain­ly, hunt­ing could still hap­pen on pri­vate parcels with landown­er per­mis­sion, but I believe it would be com­ple­ment­ed by imple­ment­ing con­tra­cep­tion to con­trol the pop­u­la­tion. The first link below con­tains infor­ma­tion about Kali Pereira, the young woman work­ing with Dr. Rut­berg and I’d like to fig­ure out a way to get her here to help us with our deer! 

   http://news.vet.tufts.edu/2017/05/kali-pereira/
   https://www.livescience.com/46175-birth-control-for-deer.html
   https://undark.org/article/birth-control-for-bambi/
   https://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/06/nyregion/providing-birth-control-to-deer-in-an-overrun-village.html
   http://www.pzpinfo.org/pzp_faqs.html?fbclid=IwAR1D6vCmb4NVza6vKDPc9e6UXnWjm8KeRfXyIcn6d2sp7YRvAnxa6RrfAgo
   http://www.pzpinfo.org/origins.html
   https://www.wildlifefertilitycontrol.org/about-botstiber-institute-for-wildlife-fertility-control/staff/
   http://news.vet.tufts.edu/2017/05/a‑delicate-balance-free-roaming-horses-on-the-island-of-vieques-puerto-rico/

   

   Comment by Cynthia Brast on December 10, 2018 at 9:37 am