Deer Culling in Richmond Park: Brutal Slaughter Or Necessary Reality?”

“Deer culling in Richmond Park: brutal slaughter or necessary reality?” It’s a foggy Sunday afternoon in Richmond Park, London, and a herd of fallow deer is peacefully grazing, apparently unaware of the presence of human visitors around them. Taking a closer look though, you’d notice the deer are suspiciously gazing at the human visitors, carefully moving away whenever an overly curious child tries to approach them. The deer are nervous because culling season has just finished. As one can see from their website, there are two culls in Richmond Park – the males in February and the females in November. During that time there’s no public access to the park from 8 pm to 7.30 am. The Royal Parks claim the cull is necessary in order to maintain the number of deer in the park and prevent overgrazing, which would ultimately result in starvation. But the truth is much more nuanced. ARE THERE TOO MANY? As a successful wild species, deer numbers can multiply dramatically. A herd of 50 can become 100 in two years of mild weather. “And multiplying their numbers could potentially cause issues,” says Derek Stimpson, Chairman of South-East Branch of the British Deer Society. Without population control, food would become scarce and more animals would ultimately suffer. “There would also be other welfare issues such as low body fat, malnutrition, high incidence of death from exposure to cold in winter and a build-up of parasites and diseases in deer,” says Adam Curtis, Park Manager for Richmond Park. “As a result of the cull, the meat is sold to licensed game dealers and all the money is reinvested into caring for our herds. It must be stressed we do not undertake commercial deer farming, and as such the meat is not labelled as Royal Parks when it is sold to the consumer.” However, some information obtained by The Mail Online at the end of 2017 has shown that the profit from the meat sold in 2016 was £24,985 after the shoot in February 2017. Is the entirety of this money being re-invested to care for the herds? The Royal Parks claim it is. WHY IS THAT? “The countryside and the climate here are beneficial to deer, and we have six species living wild,” says Mr Stimpson. But it has been counter-argued that beneficial climate is not the only reason why the deer are multiplying at this speed. “They are being offered supplementary feeding and a lot of it, especially in winter. They give them special deer pellets, sweetcorn and a lot of hay,” says Natalia Doran of Animal Aid. “The Royal Parks say the culling is necessary because the numbers are too high. Well, if you want to solve that problem the first thing you need to do is stop contributing to it. Animals do think about breeding, whether they offspring can survive so unless there’s plenty of food they will breed less if there’s less food.” Mrs Doran claimed that the deer are being farmed. “And maybe for some people it’s acceptable that there is a venison farm in the middle of London but maybe not.” WHAT ARE THE PROBLEMS ARISING FROM THIS? With such a big population in London, the problems that arise from that are various. “First, you have ecological damage,” says Mr Stimpson, “that is to say muntjacs and so on move from their natural habitat and start grazing the bundle there in woodland and changing the nature of the woodland for native animals and insects. “There is also economical damage, deer will go into tops of the trees, they will go into farmer’s crops and damage them.” And damage from motor collisions may be a reality as well, says Mr Stimpson, should the numbers get too high for the deer to remain within the park. WHAT CAN BE DONE? Move the Deer If in fact there are too many deer in Richmond Park, whichever the reason, why not moving the herds to Scotland? Nature is plentiful in the Highlands and culling would not be necessary. Historically, Richmond Park was enclosed by a wall in 1637, and deer have been inside that wall since then. Before that, it was a hunting area for the king of England when staying in his residency in Richmond Palace. For these reasons alone, the park has a lot of historical value, and many Londoners wouldn’t like to see the deer go. “But there’s more,” says Ron Crompton, Chairman at Friends of Richmond Park, “the whole of the landscape is effectively created by the deer. The grassland is grazed by the deer. “Also, the wealth of chestnuts, acorn trees and so on, which were planted, originally, to be deer food.” Moving the herds would, therefore, prove quite difficult even for the ecosystem. “But also, these deer in Scotland wouldn't survive. The vegetation is much tougher and the thing that kills deer, in the end, is their teeth. The food that they would eat in the Highlands of Scotland would cause them to live shorter lives than here because of that.” The Culls The current solution when it comes to the overpopulation of the deer in Richmond Park, the culls are regulated by The Deer Act, promulgated by the British Deer Society in 1963 and amended in 1991. Large calibre weapons are used to guarantee a “humane” dispatch, and the people that carry out the culling are usually trained by The British Deer Society, which runs a variety of training courses, dealing with all the aspects of stalking deer. Following the assessment of the number and types of deer in the park, a management plan is regularly drafted to decide how to carry on the culling. After the deer are killed, all the carcasses have to be checked by trained people for various diseases, including tuberculosis, blue tongue and mouth disease. The meat is then sold to licensed game dealers and the money allegedly reinvested in caring for the herds. GonaCon and other Contraceptives England wildlife contraception, the GonaCon, which is already successfully used in America, requires darting a female deer with a hormone loaded dart. Alternatively, the contraceptive can be put in food pellets. “A single dose is capable of preventing the animal from reproducing for several years,” says Dr Francesco Filippo Cerami of the Veterinary Centre Kunesias in Palermo, “however, there are several variants to consider when administrating the vaccine. The species on which is used, the chemical composition and dose, and the overall health condition of the animal are some of them. “There is a risk of spreading these vaccines in the ecosystem with the consequences being a huge damage to several species.” However, in the specific case of Richmond Park, it has been argued that even if animals would pick up the leftovers bait, it would not represent a big problem. “Squirrels, rabbits and crows. These are the animals that would pick up the leftovers” says Mrs Doran, “the contraceptive would probably not affect crows, so rabbits and squirrels would be affected, animals that are already culled in huge numbers anyway.” “[But] shooting the deer with the special dart rifle would also be harder than with normal weapons,” says Mr Stimpson, “they are prey animals naturally and that is in their genes, so when they are approached by a predator, they become alert and they’d move away or move off, so with a dart gun you have to get much nearer to the deer then you do with a bullet.” Keeping track of the ones you darted could also prove difficult, says Mr Stimpson. The only way this could be done would be to shoot them with a paintball or a marker, but that would make the deer more and more nervous so they would become more difficult to shoot. A solution? Animal Aid would argue that the culling of deer as it is practised now goes against public morality. “Society now thinks that fox hunting, that has been traditionally practised for a long time, has gone outside the boundaries of public morality,” says Mrs Doran. “But on the other side, the public would accept the eating of meat and certainly the use of animal products in medication so we need to draw the lines of why is done and whether it goes outside of public morality.” When exploring a possible alternative to the culling it is, of course, necessary to ask the people in charge of taking these decisions. Jamie Cordery of the Deer Initiative of England and Wales, which currently support the culls, told Fauna that they had “no motivations or views, so provided the actions are legal” they would support alternatives. However, when asked whether they would accept GonaCon, for example, Mr Cordery dismissed the idea by saying that “we would have to be convinced that it was effective”. It’s probably still a long way to go before alternatives to culling will be implemented in Richmond Park, but people are increasingly looking at the possibility, and this can surely be considered a start. .

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