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Editorial
Deer overpopulation is a problem, but let experts do their job
Thursday, January 28, 2010
An open season on deer -- a really open season -- sounds like a good idea for anyone who's had to swerve to avoid the animals or had their trip interrupted and vehicle damaged with a collision.
Such is the idea behind LB836, which would allow night-hunting with spotlights and shooting without permits as a way to decrease the deer population in Nebraska. It would also allow landowners and their immediate family members to kill, without permits, deer caught damaging property, and would establish additional deer hunting seasons.
There is plenty of reason to be concerned about deer.
According to State Farm Insurance, there were about 2.4 million collisions between deer and vehicles during a two-year period between July 1, 2007 and June 30, 2009, or about 100,000 per month.
That's 18.3 percent more than five years earlier, and translates to one every 26 seconds -- although they're concentrated in the early evening and are mostly during mating season, the last three months of the year.
To be fair to the deer, there are 7 percent more vehicles on the road than there were five years ago.
But among the 35 states where at least 7,000 deer-vehicle collisions occur per year, New Jersey and Nebraska posted the largest increases, 54 percent. Kansas was next with 41 percent.
The average property damage cost of each accident was $3,050, up 3.4 percent from the previous year. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, deer-vehicle collisions in the U.S. cause more than 150 fatalities each year.
Adding crop and timber damage, deer cause a billion dollars in destruction in the United States each year.
Too many deer is a problem for themselves as well, making them susceptible to disease and starvation.
But the state officials who know the most about the issue oppose LB836.
The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission is already dealing with the issue by extending antlerless-deer hunting seasons, reducing permit prices and taking other steps to reduce the herd.
Allowing spotlighting and unregulated hunting is the wrong approach.