Essay 01
HUM 100
01/29/2015
Please Don’t Pick up Rifles
The issue whether we should use lethal weapon to control the overpopulation of deer is a very controversial one. According to New York Times columnist Nicolas D. Kristof, hunting is the only solution and an effective form of deer management. It will remove a number of individual deer from the population and will prevent those individuals from reproducing. Moreover in his article, he also claimed that it is also very cost effective and good for environment. Let’s analyze his article and make some argument about it.
Nicolas D. Kristof, in his article ‘For Environmental Balance, Pick up rifles’ represented some strong argument about deer hunting .According to his article, about 150 people are killed per year in car clashes by deer causing $1 billion dollar damages. Also, they spread many dangerous and contagious diseases like ticks and Lyme. Furthermore they are also causing environmental imbalance. The number of predators like beer and wolves declined and deer are taking their place and that is causing environmental imbalance. The preventive methods like birth control and dislocation were failed. Birth control caused government a huge amount of money. So Kristof encouraged everyone to participate in hunting deer. Hunting, says Kristof, also connects people with the outdoors and creates a broader constituency for wilderness preservation.
From my point of view, I strongly disagree with the idea of deer hunting. Deer help to sustain biodiversity in our ecosystem. Deer provide space and resources for less competitive plants, allowing them to gain a control in the vegetative community. In this way, the vegetative community balances the ecosystem and increases plant diversity. If one part of this system destroys, the whole system will destroy. Furthermore, when part of the animal population is removed, new animals migrate in and the remaining population rebounds due to food abundance. Since hunters always want more deer to shoot, they kill more bucks than does. As a result, pregnant does are left with an abundant food supply which tends to give birth to a higher ratio of fawns. Moreover if deer hunting become more popular and deer meat become famous for consumption, that can cause this species’ extinct. Hunters will hunt more deer for profit without considering the number of the remaining deer. There will be more