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.”
[See previous coverage of the Anderson column HERE.]
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.
