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Comment by ciconia | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to remind all those talking about deer as pests, it is humankind that is responsible for destroying ecosystems and getting them out of balance. On the one hand, we encroach on natural habitats, remove predators, pollute water and vegetation. On the other, we live a wasteful life style and throw half of our food in the garbage. It's kinda obvious why these creatures tend to crowd our cities and suburbs (along with boars, foxes, bears and other fauna).

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What’s the alternative to considering them pests? Rewilding the suburbs? I don’t like over development or the destruction of wild habits to make room for strip malls either, but didn’t that ship sail decades ago? Suburban sprawl is a reality, and in all likelihood, it’s only going to continue to expand. The deer have been displaced. Allowing them to freely wander in neighborhoods, subsisting off garbage and ornamental bushes, isn’t a good solution for them or humans.

> Rewilding the suburbs?

Sounds good. I've planted some American Chestnut to help the process along. Hazelnuts will go in soon; lots of things eat the fallen nuts ("mast").

The big problem is dealing with all the invasive plants. Garlic mustard is a spawn of the devil.

I love when people rip up their sod and let their yards go wild (my own landscaping is grass free). It's a step in the right direction. But there are still roads, traffic, sewage lines, electric poles, fertilizer runoff, mass insecticide spraying, and the like. It's still the suburbs and can never be rewilded to a meaningful degree with so many people living there -- at least not in densely populated states like mine (NJ).

All those are considerations, but the end result will still be much wilder than any agricultural land.

american? did you get the hybrid that can withstand the blight?

Yes, it's a seventh generation backcross with the Chinese Chestnut (so, almost entirely American, but as they backcrossed they kept selecting for blight tolerance). There were three bareroot plants left over from a local planting project.

Another group is working on a genetically engineered blight tolerant chestnut, which added an enzyme (from wheat, I think) to destroy the toxic oxalate created by the blight pathogen. It would be interesting to get some of those and have them interbreed with the ones I have.

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