If you’ve never seen a deer, one bounding across a road in a park can be a romantic image worth stopping for. But for the National Park Service, deer aren’t all fuzzy cuteness—the things are all but destroying Rock Creek Park.

This winter the park service will start what will be a years-long process of killing off a large number of the white-tailed deer that roam the park. According to Nick Bartolomeo, the park’s chief ranger, there are roughly 375 deer in the entire park—a density of 80 per square-mile. For the park service, a healthy and manageable density wouldn’t exceed 20 per square-mile, and it’s been years since Rock Creek saw that.

“It’s taking place because there’s no regeneration going on in Rock Creek’s forests,” said Bartolomeo. “We for 20 years have been able to monitor the amount of vegetation regrowth—the new trees, new undergrowth and new vegetation. Basically what our data is showing is that there is no regeneration occurring right now, and the reason for that is deer overpopulation.”

While the park service weighed a number of options‚ it has opted for the most direct and lethal approach: shooting them. According to Bartolomeo, Department of Agriculture sharp-shooters will deploy at night in specific sections of the park, shooting any deer they come in contact with. The total number of deer they plan on killing will be settled once a final count is done later this fall.

So what’s going to be done with the deer once they’re killed? “We’re going to donate them to local area food banks,” said Bartolomeo.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals isn’t impressed with the plan, though, saying that killing deer will only allow the plants they feed off to grow even more, provoking remaining deer to produce more offspring. “When animals are killed, it causes a spike in the food supply which will only prompt the doe to breed at an accelerated rate. What’s happening with lethal control is that the park service will find itself in a cruel and endless and pointless killing cycle,” said Kristin Simon, PETA’s senior cruelty case worker.

“Science tells us that lethal control just doesn’t work to reduce deer population in urban settings, and in fact can make things worse. We would like the park service to focus on integrative and adaptive wildlife management plans that target food sources,” she added. Simon said the park service should more strictly enforce feeding prohibitions and nearby residents should be discouraged from planting edible plants.

Still, the National Park Service won’t be alone in trying to cull the area’s deer population—Montgomery County kicked off its deer management season this week, but unlike in Rock Creek, is allowing pre-screened hunters to take part. Fairfax County also has managed hunts.

In the end, most everyone stands to benefit. According to NBC4, deer-related car accidents are on the rise throughout the region, primarily in the suburbs. According to State Farm, there’s a higher chance you’ll hit a deer in West Virginia than anywhere else in the country (1 in 48 chance), while Virginia and Maryland are ranked as high-risk states (1 in 105 and 1 in 114, respectively).

The chances that you’ll hit a deer in D.C. are slim—1 in 1,010—but that doesn’t mean that they don’t occasionally wander into the city. Last Sunday a dead deer was found on the sidewalk in front of Cork Wine Bar on 14th Street, and a DCist reader wrote us to say that last week a deer found its way into a parking garage at 18th and G Streets NW. In January, a deer crashed through the window of the Washington Highlands library in Southeast D.C.