Are the deer in Richmond Park (London) wild?

I live up north, and found this website which says that fallow deer now roam in Derbyshire thanks to ‘escapes from deer parks’ - I’ve been to Lyme Park (a nearby stately home) and can confirm that I’ve seen deer by the road between the car park and the gate, where there are no obstacles to them just leaving. I suppose most of them don’t leave because Lyme Park is a nice home for a deer. I would say this renders them less than captive.

https://www.derbyshiremammalgroup.org.uk/fallow_deer.html

1 Like

For the most part, deer in deer parks are no more than enclosed wild deer. Though they are habituated to (and as a result more tolerant of) human presence than is usual, they are certainly not classifiable as ‘tame’. UK law treats them as wild deer whereas different regulations apply to farmed ones.

3 Likes

I go there practically every weekend, and in my opinion that is like saying the foxes are captive, since they too are enclosed. These animals feed themselves, breed, spread. Yes, they are culled but aren’t wild animals too that need their population contained? They are far from domesticated, and also have a large area to roam, almost like the rhinos that are checked up on and contained to protect their population.

1 Like

They can’t spread because they’re fenced. The foxes are wild because they can easily get through the fence by digging under it.

3 Likes

Also worth mentioning that the British definition of “wild” and the American definiton of “wild” are very different.

Yes. Remember we are using the iNat definition here.

3 Likes

I enjoyed that article about the spread of deer from deer parks into other areas. I thought account of the warden’s technique of determining numbers of one group escape descended populations was really interesting. I’d never heard of using thermal imaging for population counts, and it makes great sense.

1 Like

But if a private citizen shoots just one, they go to jail for poaching.

It bothers me that the people we pay to protect wildlife kill more wildlife than anyone else. Setting the fox to guard the henhouse?

We have had whole threads about enclosed bison and African megafauna, and disagreements about whether “enclosed” is compatible with “wild.”

We have on iNat, yes.

That is a quote from the Richmond Park website - how they choose to describe ‘their’ deer. Could have a similar discussion about the Queen’s swans?

1 Like

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.