Shawnee-Mission Park Deer Over-crowding

Shawnee-Mission Park has a problem. It's 1,250 acres has 8 times the number of deer that the habitat can reasonably support. The solution is really obvious: expand the park to 10,000 acres. O.K., you scoff and say there's not enough land left around the park for that. Well, in a way there is. Between the park and the Kansas River lies a huge landfill of around 600 acres and along the Kansas River to the west and south of the river is a large undeveloped area. Check it out on Google Earth. The secret would be to provide a route for the deer to use to traverse the area between the park and the river and along the river to the north-south swathe of open land East of Desoto and North of K-10. That would take a lot of money, but preserving the open space would be a good thing. It would allow the deer population (and other wildlife) a habitat with access to open areas.

Shawnee-Mission Park is attractive to deer that enter the metro area, but once there they are somewhat trapped. I can't imagine that they are any more thrilled by the overcrowding that the park-goers are. I hope the biodiversity study the Park Board plans to do will come to the conclusion that more land area is needed.

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