Book Review: DEERLAND by Al Cambronne
DEERLAND is a thought-provoking look at our national bewilderment concerning our relationship with deer. Its two hundred and sixty-three pages will be a source of consternation to hunters and non-hunters alike. Those who might think they have a grasp on nature will quickly understand that our current deer populations are anything but natural, having exceeded one hundred times the level of a century ago.
The cost of our excess deer population, in terms of 200 people dead per year and billions of dollars of vehicle damage is staggering, as is the cost of crop destruction by deer. Hunters are inefficient when it comes to harvesting deer, for heat stress and starvation takes most fawns in the south where starvation and predators take most fawns in states like Wisconsin.
Though we take six million deer a year, yet that does nothing to control the overpopulation in many areas. The author writes of America's “Deer Industrial Complex.” While not on a scale of our military industrial complex, it is a larger industry than most would realize. Although Mr. Cambronne writes extensively about the search for ecological balance, I'd quibble with that notion a bit. They can be no ecological balance in a landscape artificially molded and manipulated by man. The very presence of infrastructure prohibits any semblance of a natural ecosystem. We can strive for balance, but it can in no way be a natural one.
As I write this, once the nation's fourth largest city, Detroit, has fallen into insolvency. With $18 – 20 billion in debt, forty percent of the city's street lights not working, half of their parked closed since 2008 . . . now isn't really the ideal time to ask what “they” are going to do to restore the balance of nature or improve the ecosystem. It is but one example why long-term efforts at game management often are not in the cards. A nation that cannot balance its own checkbook can hardly be expected to balance an ecosystem.
DEERLAND is enjoyable read, one the offers a thorough treatment of the current state of the family of animals in the United States. While not offering any quick fix or easy solution as there is none, it does offer an expansive assessment of the current situation: a critical first step.
For more information and to get your copy, please see: http://alcambronne.com/ , Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and so forth.
Copyright 2013 by Randy Wakeman. All Rights Reserved.
