Cull of the wild: how do you kill a deer in Washington?

• Author: Murphy, Tim
• Position: TEN MILES SQUARE

The full depth of the District's wildlife problem was on display one Sunday afternoon last November in the lion's den at the National Zoological Park. As a stunned crowd of Indian-summer tourists looked on, a white-tailed deer weaved through pedestrian traffic and vaulted the railing into the enclosure--where, after a brief chase, ir found itself in the not-so-loving embrace of Nababiep and Shera, the zoo's two young lionesses.

Encounters like these are becoming more and more common in and around the nation's capital. Last spring, just across the D.C. line in Silver Spring, Maryland, a young buck crashed through the window of a Greek restaurant, then made its way to the bakery section of a nearby Giant supermarket before being apprehencled and euthanized on account of its injuries. Four people were wounded in a similar incident when a deer burst through the window of a McDonald's near Union Station in 2002. Doe-eyed intruders have also cropped up everywhere from Metro platforms to the Tidal Basin to the vice president's backyard.

Forty years ago, seeing a deer in the District was an event roughly on par with spotting Sasquatch or Salinger; according to the National Park Service, there were only four deer sightings in Rock Creek Park in the entire 1960s. Bur with no natural predators and only the occasional swerving Volvo to halt its growth, the population has exploded in recent years: as of 2007, there were eighty-two deer per square mile in Rock Creek Park--roughly four times what wildlife specialists consider sustainable. The influx poses a serious threat to the forest ecosystem; deer damage their habitar by treating saplings and undergrowth like a veritable Old Country Buffet, preventing vegetation from regenerating and literally devouring the homes of other species. Ina zero-sum ecosystem, their emergence necessarily comes at the expense of others. Ted Williams, a columnist for Audubon magazine, calls the white-tailed deer "the most dangerous and destructive wild animal in North America."

Washington is not the only city with an excess of ungulates; deer populations have mushroomed across the Northeast and parts of the Midwest. Bur the District has a unique vortex of variables that simultaneously nurtures the problem and prevents anything from being done about ir. Few other urban areas have such an abundance of forests and parklands, allowing deer easy access to leafier neighborhoods. And whereas other cities have been able to take...