If it’s leopards in Mumbai, deer roam Chennai streets

CHENNAI: While other Indian cities face the problem of stray dogs, Chennai is witnessing a peculiar problem of stray deer.

A man-animal conflict appears to be in the making as a large number of deer from the Guindy National Park roam around the busy Guindy, Taramani and Velachery areas of the city.

DNA has learnt that there is a secret yet thriving  market for venison (deer meat) in these parts. Some of the spotted deer are hit and run over by vehicles, while some others die after feeding on polythene bags from roadside garbage dins.

Some others are furtively hunted down. On September 16, a deer  attacked a man inside the park, causing grievous injuries to his chest and abdomen.

An unrestrained multiplication of the animal population in the Guindy Park – the only national park inside an Indian city – is letting the situation out of the wildlife officials’ hand, say environmentalists.

“The park has turned into a glorified zoo with a deer population it cannot sustain”, says RJ Ranjit Daniels, director of Care Earth, an  NGO.

According to wildlife officials’ own admission, the 600-acre park has a deer population of 2,500. This density of more than 1000 deer per sq km is probably the highest in the world.

Wildlife filmmaker Shekar Dattatri says the animals are getting  habituated to roads, vehicles and humans.

“It has come to a stage that some of them can’t differentiate between grass and a green polythene bag”, Dattatri notes.

Wildlife warden, Chennai, KSSVP Reddy says the population in the park  is well within the carrying capacity. “We have built a compound wall to prevent the animals from straying out”, he says. This also means a large number of deer, now feeding and breeding outside the park,  cannot get back.

Spotted deer was introduced to the Guindy park by the British a couple of centuries ago for hunting.

After it was converted into a protected park, the deer population has gone up from a few hundreds to 2,500.

While some countries allow seasonal hunting to keep deer population under control, it is an offence under the Wildlife Act in India.

“If killing poses ethical questions, they should be relocated to campuses elsewhere in the country. If the situation continues, either  an epidemic could wipe out the entire population in the park or the animals could get congenital diseases because of excessive inbreeding”, cautions Daniels.

Environmentalists also call for a genetic study to ascertain the gene pool of the animals.