The administration of Kenting National Park in Pingtung County is considering culling part of the park’s wild deer population after the animals wreaked havoc in the park’s tropical monsoon forest, the park’s management office said yesterday.
About 1,500 to 2,000 Formosan sika deer roam the park since conservation efforts began in 1984, it said.
However, the thriving herds harm the monsoon forests in the Kenting Uplifted Coral Reefs Nature Reserve, which is adjacent to the deer’s main habitat, it said.
Photo: Tsai Tsung-hsien, Taipei Times
The overabundant deer are eating tree saplings faster than the trees can naturally reproduce, while the bucks harm adult trees when rubbing their antlers, the office said.
Wandering deer also cause road accidents and feed on what farmers grow in their fields, leading to tensions between local residents and the area’s wildlife, it said.
Although the office has set up animal crossing signs, subsidized crop damage, erected barriers and given deer birth control injections, these measures did not achieve the desired effect, it said.
Officials have been working with the Council of Agriculture’s Livestock Research Institute to improve trapping and find ways to “harvest deer byproducts,” it said, without elaborating.
Regulated hunting is utilized in the US, several European countries and Japan to reduce deer populations, Kenting National Park Administration Deputy Director Hsu Shu-kuo (許書國) said.
Government agencies would have to discuss changes to regulations to allow the more aggressive population control measures needed at the park, Hsu said.
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