Photo by Mr. T in DC

An animal rights group filed suit yesterday to stop a National Park Service plan to cull Rock Creek Park’s deer population by shooting them. The lawsuit, filed by five D.C. residents and a California-based group In Defense of Animals, called the planned use of sharpshooters “arbitrary and dramatic” and asked a court to order the park service to consider non-lethal methods to control the park’s deer population.

“This unprecedented and extreme approach to reducing the population of native wildlife that, according to the Park Service’s own data, has remained relatively stable for at least ten years and decreased in many years under natural conditions without any human interference, is unwarranted, particularly when NPS also concedes that the deer pose no urgent threat to the Park or any of its resources,” said the suit.

As we reported yesterday, the park service says that Rock Creek’s deer population is far above what’s sustainable—the estimated 375 deer is almost four times what the park should have, and the excess number of deer has left the park unable to naturally regenerate over the years. While the park service considered non-lethal options such as building deer pens and limiting doe reproduction, it opted for sharpshooters as a means to bring the deer population down as quickly as possible, within one to three years. The park service has estimated that it would have to kill some 296 deer to get to its preferred population density.

The lawsuit accused the park service of not adequately making the case that the deer are having a negative impact on Rock Creek—it says that deer densities can reach or exceed 100 to 200 deer per square-mile—and that shooting the deer would have a negative impact on how residents and visitors perceive and use the park. According to the suit, the five residents—all of whom live near the park—would all suffer some level of distress if the shooting takes place. Says to suit of one plaintiff, Carol Grunewald:

Luring the deer to bait stations at night to shoot them with guns and crossbows – as the Park Service currently plans to do – will significantly harm Ms. Grunewald’s aesthetic and recreational interests in the wildlife and the Park in general because she knows that some of the deer she enjoys observing will be killed, and worse, that some will suffer painful wounds from gunshots and arrows before dying. If the Park Service proceeds with its plans to kill deer in the Park, Ms. Grunewald will need to stop using the Park to minimize the chance that she will see dead or dying deer and because it will no longer be a place of solitude and tranquility, but instead will cause her great anxiety and distress – knowing that the animals she has grown to love are being maimed and killed.

If the shooting happens, the suit says, Grunewald may even have to sell her house, while another plaintiff would stop hiking in the park and a third would stop painting and photographing Rock Creek wildlife, deer included.

The park service says that it has planned to start shooting deer early next year, and would only do so at night. The meat from the dead deer would be donated to local food banks.

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