On Tue, 22 Jul 2003 23:34:21 -0500, Phaedrine Stonebridge
wrote:

It is heartbreaking to watch these beautiful animals starve
because they have no natural predators (except man) and are severely
over-populated.

Even human hunters are distorting the population, taking the strongest
and leaving the weakest (inverse-darwinism). Introducing wildcats or
cougars back to the environment is out of the question, since they
cannot be trained to avoid adults as well as children...after all,
who's ever heard of an "obedient cat"? ;P Even so, I'm sure some
PETA extremists are working toward that goal (on the other hand, many
would look upon one animal killing another animal for food, especially
young, sick and old members, as "bad"...so predators are "bad"
according to the logic of "ethical" animal rights activists)

The only other predator of sick or weak deer would be wolves, and they
aren't very adaptable to human settlements, either...especially
livestock areas. It's ironic and hypocritical that we preach that
places such as Africa should keep their predators alive, whereas we've
virtually wiped ours off the face of the continent.

Dan