TOWN OF POUGHKEEPSIE – The local group
“Save Our Deer” will conduct a rally Saturday afternoon to
oppose the latest deer cull conducted by Vassar College on its Vassar
Farm and Ecological Preserve.
This month, management officials from the USDA will conduct the cull.
Vassar Dean of Strategic Planning and Academic Resources Marianne Begemann
said managing deer populations go beyond Vassar with the Mohonk Preserve,
Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies, and Teatown Lake Reservation among
the other Hudson Valley locales that employ similar practices.
Vassar Director of Media Relations and Public Affairs Jeffrey Kosmacher
said the Vassar Farm land is about one square mile. “Just before
the 2014 spring birthing season we estimated the deer population there
to be between 48 and 59 per square mile,” he said. “Studies
show that plant and animal communities have been greatly damaged at other
northeastern sites when there are more than 10 deer per square mile.”
Kosmacher said even before several deer were born last spring at the Vassar
Farm, “We already had dozens more deer living there than the land
can sustain.”
But, the anti-culling group stated on its Facebook page that the deer
population was “stable before the college arrogantly began a campaign
of repeatedly baiting them with food, only to shoot them in the head,
in a practice that even hunters find unsportsmanlike and cruel.”
Vassar’s deer management program is explained at http://farm.vassar.edu
.
