Newtown’s Great Deer Balancing Act

In any political fight where interest groups are polarized and having a hard time hearing and understanding each other, inevitably one side or the other starts talking about “striking a balance.” Usually this means that they want their opponents to give a little ground, without, of course, any movement on their part toward the middle. But as we have watched Newtown’s Tick-Borne Disease Action Committee struggle with its equilibrium, we have come to understand how much balance, or more precisely imbalance, lies at the heart of its difficult charge to find a suitable local response to the threat of tick-borne diseases in the community.

The destruction of natural habitats by development in western Connecticut, and particularly Fairfield County, has concentrated the deer and driven out their predators. The resulting imbalance has not only afforded diseased ticks a convenient and comprehensive transportation system, it has decimated native plants in the forest understory where the deer forage, and it has brought personal injury to our roads and highways where the natural and developed worlds literally collide.

The Tick-Borne Disease Action Committee, like the community, is divided on what to do about the burgeoning deer population. Whether the town opts for a deer “cull” or for one of the deer fertility suppression methods suggested by hunting foes, sustained support will be required to meet the challenge of reducing the deer population by 3,000 or more to make a perceptible dent in the tick population. It will also cost a lot of money — possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the methods employed. For any strategy to be effective over the long haul, that cost will have to be incurred at regular intervals from now on. And we would be making that commitment knowing there is little evidence corroborating a correlation between deer population and the incidence of Lyme disease.

The committee hopes to conclude its work and issue a report by March. Its protracted debates on deer population control have sometimes strayed from the panel’s public health purview to include environmental and public safety concerns, which suggests that there may a role for both the Conservation Commission and the Police Commission in finding a “balanced” approach to the problem for the town. Then, assuming that after months of wrangling over this issue people are both hearing and understanding each other, Newtown may be ready to attempt its great deer balancing act.

In the meantime, there is one thing we can all do that is cheap, easy, and probably more effective than anything else we can do to thwart tick-borne disease in humans: conduct a thorough tick-check on yourself and your family members when you come in from outside.