So Gov. Mike Dunleavy wants to move Sitka black-tailed deer to the Mat-Su region. If I still worked for the Department Fish and Game, I would have ticked off the same reasons as the current biologists for why it’s a bad idea: the long winter, deep snow, competition with moose for food, predators that would prefer to take down a deer than a moose, pathogens and parasites, collisions with vehicles, and depredation of crops and ornamental plants.
Some deer might survive if people feed them. That’s a bad idea. And it’s illegal. The millions of dollars it would take to prove the governor wrong could be better spent on a host of other pressing issues.
Deer can easily walk from Prince William Sound to Anchorage and beyond. When I was the Anchorage management biologist, I received calls about deer in the Anchorage Bowl. They walked up the Seward Highway in winters with little snow. I even had a couple of reliable reports of deer sightings in Eklutna Valley. I found a few dead deer that didn’t survive until spring. However, I never saw a live deer in the Anchorage area.
Of course, with global warming, Anchorage and the Mat-Su may eventually have far more deer than moose, like Minnesota, and we won’t have to pay a cent.
— Rick Sinnott
Chugiak
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