
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, June 8, 1993                   TAG: 9306080335
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DON'T ENCOURAGE DEER FARMING

WHETHER Americans are skittish about eating venison, as suggested in the May 26 feature entitled "The Bambi Factor," Virginia's professional wildlife biologists are skittish about allowing anyone to raise venison on deer farms. Many biologists see in commercial deer farming a serious threat to the health of Virginia's native, wild white-tailed deer population - a billion-dollar resource enjoyed by millions of Virginia citizens and tourists, hunters and non-hunters alike.

Responding to biologists' concerns, the Virginia Board of Game and Inland Fisheries recently appointed a panel of experts to advise it as to whether it should continue to permit the raising of deer in captivity anywhere in Virginia. Reasons why the wildlife-management profession looks askance at deer farming:

Exotic-deer farming activities can harm both white-tailed deer populations and domestic livestock through competition for forage and the spread of parasites and disease.

Few enclosures for exotic deer are escape-proof. Escapes may result in exotic deer becoming established in the wild and displacing native wildlife populations.

Exotic-deer farming may result in the public regarding Virginia's native deer as a private commodity. This could lead to the commercialization of native deer and other wildlife.

The farming of exotic deer may increase the marketing of illegally taken wildlife. This trafficking in dead wildlife may become a significant law-enforcement problem.

Please do not publicize and thereby encourage expansion of game ranching and the consumption of commercially raised venison in Virginia, for all of the above reasons.

M. RUPERT CUTLER

President, Virginia Chapter The Wildlife Society

ROANOKE

by CNB