PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Sharpshooters hired by the city have killed 429 deer in Fairmount Park in the past eight weeks, reducing the herd in one of the nation's largest urban parks by 70 percent.
The deer were shot in two wooded stream valleys in the 4,180-acre park.
The hunters were hired because of damage done by the deer to those two sections.
"The forest has either not regenerated at all or what is there is picked clean to a level of five or six feet high," said Barry Bessler, Fairmount Park Commission chief of staff.
View Comments
Shug Davis, director of Friends of Fairmount Park Animals, said the shootings were "senseless slaughter" and endangered people.