Baltimore County lawmakers are considering a $42,000 “deer culling operation” at Loch Raven Reservoir after a first-ever bow hunt in the fall failed to curtail the exploding population, officials said.
Starting in February, sharpshooters could kill up to 250 deer in the city-owned reservoir to control a population officials said is threatening motorists, destroying native plants and affecting the quality of the region’s drinking water. About 880 deer live in Loch Raven, an area that can only support about 100, said David Carroll, the county’s director of sustainability.
“This is an ongoing program that has to be maintained,” Carroll said. “The deer reproduce. You have to get it down to a level that can be sustained by the resources we are trying to protect.”
The program would come just months after the reservoir’s first public bow hunt began in September. As of Dec. 6, the hunt — which lasts through January — yielded 163 deer, officials said.
Only 1,600 acres of the 10,000-acre reservoir is open to public hunting, according to John Markley, a manager within the county’s Department of Environmental Protection and Resource Management.
Lawmakers are considering a proposed contract with U.S. Department of Agriculture that extends until the end of January 2010 and will be automatically renewed the next four years.
Some lawmakers, including newly named Council Chairman Joe Bartenfelder, questioned the need to go beyond a one-time kill. The area’s other reservoirs, Prettyboy and Liberty, have been open to deer hunting for more than three decades, but the program at Loch Raven has not been adequately tested, Bartenfelder said.
“We haven’t had a real opportunity to see how successful this is going to be,” said Bartenfelder, a Fullerton Democrat. “Should we get ourselves committed to something long-term?”
Both the public and contracted hunts were discussed at a public hearing in August. No one testified against the proposal at a council meeting Tuesday.
