DATE: Monday, April 21, 1997                TAG: 9704210077

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B5   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS 

DATELINE: FAIRFAX                           LENGTH:   38 lines

FAIRFAX COUNTY IS CONSIDERING PUTTING A LIMIT ON ITS DEER KILL

Facing a growing suburban deer population, animal control officials are considering allowing sharpshooters to kill deer in the northern part of the county.

Animal Control Director David Flagler and Supervisor Stuart Mendelsohn favor using the county-trained sharpshooters as a way of controlling the county's white-tailed deer population, which Flagler estimates is 10 times the number Fairfax habitats can support.

``They're basically eating everything in sight,'' Mendelsohn said.

Flagler is trying to set up a pilot program using sharpshooters in certain areas of the Dranesville District. He said if that is successful, the kills could be expanded to other parts of the county.

Parks officials said the animals' voracious appetites are destroying trees and bushes that are the habitats of other species.

But many others oppose killing deer, and instead are asking the supervisors to consider birth control or other methods of population suppression. Simply because residents are inconvenienced by the deer is no reason for a countywide hunt, they said.

``There are not more deer; there are more deer in a smaller area,'' Jeff Lange said at a recent board of supervisors meeting.

New construction has left the animals with fewer wooded spaces in which to reside, forcing more of them to cross roads and enter gardens in search of food.

The Fairfax County Environmental Quality Advisory Council, in a March 17 letter to the board of supervisors, supported the idea of a managed hunt. The hunt was one of several strategies also suggested by the Northern Virginia Deer Management Committee, which studied the county's whitetail population. KEYWORDS: DEER HUNTING

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