ISU Bengal

Issue date: 4/27/05 Section: News

Media Credit: Bob Pepping/Contra Costa Times A group of deer wander on the 14th fairway during the first round of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am in Pebble Beach, California, on Thursday, February 5, 2004.

WASHINGTON--Wisconsin officials last week toyed with the idea of shooting 2 million stray cats. With white-tailed deer overrunning suburbia, a New Jersey environmental group wants more, not less, hunting. Fort Worth, Texas, may enlist downtown merchants to shoot firecrackers at an estimated 1 million noisy grackles.

Battles to curb the spread of Canada geese, beavers, kudzu, raccoons, house sparrows and European starlings are already pretty much lost. Residents of suburban Detroit and other regions are trying to cope with increases in voracious rabbits and stinky skunks.

These species--once considered benign if not cuddly--show that there can be way too much of a good thing.

Animal-vehicle crashes--on roads and in the air--cost America about $1.4 billion and claim about 200 lives a year.

What's happening, say conservation biologists, is a good Earth Day lesson. America's landscape is becoming homogenized, looking very much the same. That means certain generalist species--such as deer and Canada geese--thrive, while specialist species that live in unique landscapes, such as the Cerulean Warbler, a songbird considered vulnerable and found in the eastern half of the United States, are in trouble.

"Some things get out of balance," said Smithsonian National Zoological Park research scientist John Rappole, who co-wrote a book on deer overabundance. "As humans, you have to create yourself a little space, and some of these things are definitely imposing on our space, like the deer and the grackles."

That imbalance helps some wildlife thrive.

"We've modified landscapes or ecosystems so that some species--whether they are invasive or not--become overabundant," said Norman Christensen, a leading ecologist at Duke University. "The homogenization of our landscapes around particular habitats tends to favor certain species and disfavor others."

Some have even compared the smothering effects of adaptable wildlife to the ubiquitous retailing giant Wal-Mart.

"The more adaptable animals are surviving," said Rachel Brittin, the spokeswoman for the International Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies. "It's the Darwin theory: survival of the fittest, and Wal-Mart is a good example."

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