Pitt class recommends using sharpshooters to cull city's deer population

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- Responding to an out-of-control deer population, the Gainey administration is drafting a citywide plan to rein in their numbers by deploying bow hunters in all of the major city parks next fall. 

But a Pitt professor and his graduate students say bolder action is needed. They said they've uncovered new and alarming numbers and they're proposing an expanded plan, including the use of sharpshooters to dramatically reduce that population. 

The deer have eaten just about everything that can be eaten in the city parks and have fanned out through gate neighborhoods, destroying gardens and being hit by cars. A graduate class at Pitt took a semester studying the problem and is now recommending bold and decisive action. 

For the past several months, Professor Jeremy Weber and his students at Pitt's Graduate School of Public and International Affairs have studied the devastation firsthand. Having eaten the new tree saplings, they say the deer are gradually decimating the urban forest in the city's major urban parks.  

"More bare hillsides, more erosion, less native plants and wildlife," Weber said.

The class' findings are alarming. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, an urban park can sustain a population of nine deer per square mile -- but their study of Frick Park in 2010 found there were more than 50 per square mile. Professor Weber's class says they now estimate that number has grown to more than 300 per square mile. 

"Three hundred deer mean a lot damage to your parks and a lot of deer dying though vehicle collisions, through disease," Weber said.

Hungry deer are ranging through neighborhoods, eating through people's gardens and posing a dangerous traffic hazard. The class said in 2004, the city recovered 140 deer carcasses mostly on the roadways. In 2023, that had skyrocketed to 575. Accidents cost an estimated $3.5 million a year. 

"That's a 411 percent increase over two decades," Weber said. 

The class also determined that bow hunting will not result in a meaningful reduction in the deer population and a citywide plan should include sharpshooters to swiftly reduce the urban herd. They believe it is the more humanitarian approach. 

"I think the worst thing thing we can do is let this deer population keep ballooning the way it is because we are ending up with unhealthy deer who are dying of starvation," said student Nick Pitrone.

"If we don't do this they will die from diseases, they will die because they're going to get hit, they will die because there's no more food around them," student Maria Salazar said.

The Gainey administration will be presenting its citywide plan to city council in the next few months but the professor and his students say it should include sharpshooters to finally bring this population under control.