The value of staying on message—even when the message is hard to hear
The Denver Broncos won the Super Bowl, Bill Clinton was impeached over an affair with an intern, and Old Blue Eyes (Frank Sinatra) passed away, leaving millions of adoring fans in tears. To many, 1998 was like an “end of innocence.”
On the local scene, there was also drama. The deer population had grown at such a rate there were frequent car/deer accidents, and the deer that survived were starving and competing for dwindling graze as well as shelter in parklands and pockets of undeveloped land surrounding cities.
The park system I worked for heard of similar problems in other park districts, so a lot of research was available. Sadly, no matter what methods were attempted (e.g., contraception; trap, inoculate, and release; animal reserves), none were as effective as culling the herd, meaning eliminating a large number of deer to create a more manageable population. That was the challenge.
