Car Accidents > News
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Deer Cull Carried Out To Tackle Rising Road Accidents In West Sussex
Tue, 09 Jun 2009

Wild deer in East Grinstead, West Sussex, are significantly being culled in a bid to reduce the number of rural road accidents in the area.

Rangers reported 266 accidents involving deer in the Ashdown Forest area last year, compared to just 100 in 2000.

As well as causing collisions on the road, farmers and landowners have complained of the damage caused to their crops and timber by the animals .

To tackle the problem, the Southern Counties Deer Management aims to halve the wild deer population across Ashdown Forest and the surrounding area every year, as well as targeting areas notorious for car accidents .

SCDM operator Toby Randle claims the population of wild deer throughout the country is out of control.

"We are finding the demand for our services is really increasing, because people just don't know what to do about the deer," he said.

"Traditionally, people like looking at the deer . They think they are a pleasant thing to have around and they are, but the numbers are completely out of control and they have no natural predators.

"Every year the females have babies, so the numbers just grow and grow. What we are doing is the only thing we can do."

The SCDM is authorised to shoot deer in the close season under the "farmers' defence" of The Deer Act, but only if they can prove that the wild animals are causing serious damage to land and that a cull is necessary to prevent such damage.

Randle continued: "It's quite common to see a field of about 100 deer . The advantage of shooting out of season is you may be able to reduce that number by half within six months.

"We shoot the very young ones and the very old ones, so we are not causing any welfare issues. As far as I'm aware, there's no reason not to shoot the males all year round."
add to favouritesnewsletterlink to this pagesend to friendpost comments

Link to this page

Copy and Paste the following HTML into your page.