By Brian Trompeter
BRIAN TROMPETER
and SCOTT McCAFFREY
Staff Writers
As Martha Reeves and the Vandellas sang in the 1960s: Nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide.
Safe havens for deer across Northern Virginia continue to shrink, with critics of the plan to use sharpshooters in one locality (Arlington) throwing in the towel and the discussion on how to control deer population in another community (Vienna) beginning to take root.
Critics of Arlington Plan Appear to Throw in Towel: Over the past three years, the main institutional critic of plans in Arlington to embark on deer-management has been the Animal Welfare League of Arlington.
But that organization seems to have now accepted its efforts have not turned the tide.
In a Sept. 13 e-mail to supporters, the organization acknowledged that the county government’s plan to move forward with sharpshooters, starting in the winter of 2025-26, is unlikely to be derailed. But the organization remained unhappy.
“We believe there are more humane ways to manage deer populations, and we do not support this cull,” it said.
The organization’s opposition swayed neither county staff, which has promoted lethal means of addressing what it sees as an overabundance of deer in Arlington’s 26 square miles, nor County Board members, who have backed that position.
Board members have to take one more step – making changes to zoning – to allow for managed kills in the county. A vote is likely to come by the end of the year.
While the Animal Welfare League was vocal in its criticism, other organizations voiced support for using lethal means of addressing deer.
The community seems split: A survey conducted by the county government several years ago showed more interest in non-lethal efforts, but one released recently showed greater acceptance of use of force.
Discussion Seems to Be Beginning in Vienna: There’s no telling which articles barely will make a ripple with the public, and which will provoke a flood of commentary.
Vienna Town Council member Charles Anderson acknowledged at the body’s Sept. 9 meeting that he had been taken aback by the 15 or so e-mails he’d received so far regarding his column in the September issue of the Vienna Voice newsletter.
The column, titled “Of Bambi, Bamboo, and Bittersweet,” dealt with invasive plant and animal species, specifically deer. Anderson said he knew deer management was controversial, but had tried to lay out the issue matter-of-factly.
“None of these invasive species are easy to control,” Anderson wrote in the column. “But as stewards of Vienna’s parks and green spaces, the Town Council, I believe, has a responsibility to educate ourselves on the problem, and search for possible solutions. We need to understand the threat that these species pose to our green spaces and to human safety, and know what options we have for countering them.”
While few people would have qualms about snipping English ivy that’s strangling trees or – in a much more involved undertaking – excavating deeply to remove bamboo that’s crowding out other plants, deer management tugs far more insistently at people’s emotions.
To some, deer not only nibble flowers, denude woodlands of their understory layers and harbor ticks, but also pose a menace to motorists.
Some residents who spoke during the Sept. 9 meeting’s public-comment portion had definite views about what should be done to rein in the deer population.
Town resident Matthew Di Fiore urged that deer management should be among the Council’s top priorities. He suggested the town could adopt, with modifications, programs already put in place by Fairfax County and the city of Fairfax. He favored archery as a means of thinning the deer herd.
“Given the investments the town will be making on planting public trees, controlling deer populations can improve tree planting [and] survivability, particularly if they’re added to town streets between the curb and sidewalks,” Di Fiore said.
Resident Avril Garland agreed on the urgency of the situation and asked the town to begin taking small steps toward deer management immediately, rather than do lengthy studies that would allow the problem to grow worse in the meantime.
As an interim approach, Garland supported having sharpshooters with suppressor-equipped weapons perform the deadly task, saying it was the “most efficient and humane” method.
“With archery, sometimes the deer will keep running with the arrow embedded in it – a horrible thing to see,” she said.
Sharpshooting could be done at night when parks were closed and their entrances guarded, she added.
