Other Things Deer Do In the Woods

The support for the deer kill last night in Millburn could lead one to believe that the deer are the forest ravagers the County of Essex would claim.

But in speaking with a good number of Millburn residents, it is their own back yard that they are more concerned with than the South Mountain Reservation.

So to save a few patches of lawn and some postage stamp gardens, the Millburn Township Council supported the County's plan to once again kill the Reservation deer and any poor stragglers who have the misfortune to be in that area at the time of the kill.

But I did encounter one Millburn resident who told me a story that was rather remarkable. She is against the kill, not at all convinced that the County's argument holds water, and saw for herself a benefit of deer inhabiting an unstable forested environment.

She visited Mount St. Helen's after the volcanic eruption in the 1980's and observed to her ranger guide that there were already shoots of greenery springing up every where. The guide told her that the elk and deer in the area were fertilizing the devastated landscape with their droppings, contributing nutrients for the plants.

Indeed, the deer and elk were credited with the reintroduction of vegetation by the U.S. Forest Service.

So deer do what bears do in the woods, even though we don't see them do it.

And perhaps, just perhaps, the deer in South Mountain Reservation are adding just as much to the environment as they are taking away.

But if the County has its way, we will not only lose the deer, we will lose what they naturally leave behind. And with that loss, we may even lose the potential for massive fertilization that might be the saving grace for reforestation of South Mountain.

The Amazon rain forest----"the lungs of the world" that could hold the medicinal formulas for all kinds of disease cures---may well disappear because of human ignorance before we can fully discover and tap its benefits.

So, too, the the County will decimate a natural population before it performs due diligence on what benefits may be yielded through their preservation rather than devastation.

Human ignorance knows no bounds.