Do townspeople know that the Deer Management Subcommittees of the Harvard Conservation Commission (HCC) and the Harvard Conservation Trust (HCT) are investigating whether deer hunting should be allowed on Harvard’s conservation lands for the purpose of controlling and reducing the numbers and browsing habits of deer? Surveys of selected areas conducted by Mass. Fish and Wildlife found those areas to be “moderately” impacted by deer browsing. One must be reminded that Mass. Fish and Wildlife has a financial incentive to encourage hunting because of revenues from issuing required licenses. Therefore, for validity, corroborating surveys of deer impact from independent sources need to be presented.
At a public forum addressing this issue on May 9, the HCC, HCT, and outside speakers presented anecdotal experiences with deer hunting on their town lands. The guest from Grafton addressed his experiences in a town where hunting had always been allowed on town lands, so his story was not applicable to Harvard, since the issue here is the introduction of a prohibited activity. The experience of a speaker from Andover also appeared irrelevant because he felt he had a “right” to hunt on town lands, but we have not established hunting on conservation lands as a right here in Harvard.
However, the HCC and HCT have not established the need or the justification to control deer by hunting on town lands, or demonstrated that the goal will be achieved by allowing hunting on town lands.
Local hunters claim that they are experiencing a diminution of hunting lands and the reluctance of landowners to give permission to hunt on private lands. Therefore hunters are hoping to expand areas to hunt in, but hunting on conservation lands is not a substitute for those traditions when hunting was a sustainable and sustaining activity. Our conservation lands are set aside, to be free from the exploitation of nature and ourselves that we see all around us. Before we allow yet another irreversible intrusion into this transcendental space, let us be sure that it is indeed the deer which threaten us and not ourselves.
Margaret Kusner
South Shaker Road
