Photo by pablo.raw

The National Park Service announced today that “deer reduction operations” are set to begin tonight in Rock Creek Park. If you’re not good on government-speak, we’ll break it down: sharpshooters are going to start taking aim at the white-tailed deer that have overrun the park.

As we reported last year, the Park Service has long sought to do something about the deer, which are much more numerous than what the park’s ecosystem can handle. After a lengthy deliberative process, it decided it would be best to just shoot them, much like Maryland is doing in its parts of Rock Creek.

The plan was put on hold by a lawsuit filed by five nearby residents who said that they would suffer emotional damage and that there are better non-lethal ways to control the deer. Last week, though, a judge threw out the lawsuit, saying that the residents hadn’t proven enough damage to cause him to override the Park Service’s reasoning for choosing bullets over birth control.

Tonight’s shooting—err, “deer reduction”—will begin at 10 p.m. and continue until 4 a.m., and will proceed through until March 30. (Not all the 157 deer slated for killing will go down in those three days, though; the culling will happen over the next three years.) During the operations, the following roads will be closed off to traffic: Beach Drive north of Broad Branch Road, Ross Drive, Wise Road, Grant Road, Sherrill Drive, Joyce Road, Morrow Drive, and Bingham Road, NW.

The National Park Service has said that it plans to give deer meat from the operations to local food banks.