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A federal judge today threw out a lawsuit that sought to stop a National Park Service plan to cull the deer population in Rock Creek Park using sharpshooters.

In a 30-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Robert Wilkins found that the five D.C. residents that had filed the lawsuit had not made claims that could sufficiently counter the reasoning laid out by the Park Service for wanting to shoot the deer.

“Nature is dynamic and ever-changing. When Congress passed the Rock Creek Park Enabling Act in 1890, they could hardly have imagined a deer population causing problems in the Park, given the likely absence of the animal in the Park. Yet the Park Service is now faced with a difficult decision. The deer population in the Park is above what scientists have concluded is healthy for the long-term management of the Park. There appears to be little dispute that a decision must be made about what to do, and people understandably have strong views about the right course. But the role of this Court is not to decide that course,” wrote Wilkins in his ruling.

According to the Park Service, the park’s deer population is roughly four times higher than what it should be, threatening flora and other fauna. The Park Service had planned to kill 157 deer and donate their meat to local food banks.

In their lawsuit, though, the five residents and one California-based environmental organization said that the deer population could be effectively controlled using birth control methods, an argument recently made in the editorial pages of the Post. They also argued that they would suffer emotional damage from knowing the deer were being shot. (A petition was started to stop the shooting.) Wilkins dismissed this argument.

“There is no logical end to the argument advanced here by Plaintiffs; presumably there are members of the public for whom merely knowing that wildlife is being subjected to reproductive controls may generate negative impacts,” he wrote.

Still, even with the lawsuit out of the way, it’s doubtful that the Park Service will get down to shooting deer anytime soon. The majority of the shooting was set to be done in the winter months, when visitors to the park are at a minimum. Deer have been shot in a portion of Rock Creek in Maryland, but hunters have run into a problem—there are many more deer than the number they’ve been allowed to shoot.