COLORADO SPRINGS – The Colorado Springs City council held a public meeting Wednesday night to hear public comments, concerns, and suggestions on how to handle the urban deer population.
As Colorado Springs’ human population grows and spreads, the city is seeing more deer encounters with cars, fences, and people. Nothing was decided at Wednesday’s meeting, but several people voiced their opposition to the present options for thinning deer numbers. The three main options before council: paying professionals to cull the deer, selling urban hunting licenses, or using chemical birth control in the form of dart injections or lacing food sources.
The western half of the city sees more deer than anywhere else, and that’s where K.C. Cabral has called her home for years. She believes the deer in her neighborhood are part of what makes life here so appealing. She’s not convinced deer are the actual problem.
“I’m fired up because I feel like they already made their decision and they’re going through stages of pretending to collect information from the public. I’m not convinced they aren’t already moving ahead,” says Cabral. She adds, like her, other people living in more densely populated deer areas are already seeing their local herds thinning out.
As far as deer vehicle collisions are concerned, some believe it has more to do with inattentive or speeding drivers rather than too many deer. People opposed to killing the animals suggest installing land bridges over roads and having more public awareness campaigns, such as advising people on what and what not to plant in their yards that could attract deer to potentially problematic areas or situations.
Woodland Park held a similar meeting on Tuesday.
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