• Nautalax@lemmy.world
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    1 hour ago

    They are extremely overpopulated in much of the US, in part because most of the natural predators capable of keeping their numbers down have been killed off and there has been a huge artificial increase in field/forest interfaces where they thrive. Huge amounts of starving deer abound and descend on diminishing native vegetation with a voracious appetite while generally ignoring weird invasive foreign plants. Many native plant gardeners are vexed by their tendency to gnaw native plants, trees and shrubs to death unless those are caged in and some got a taste for venison out of revenge haha.

    Would be cool if we could re-introduce red wolves and the like to keep a lid on the deer without like half of the predators ending up shot or run over