Photo/Illutration Wild deer kept in a designated fenced area at Nara Park (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

NARA—The wild deer of Nara have long been protected here as divine messengers, but the prefectural government plans to expand the areas in which they can be exterminated.

At a meeting on March 25, Okimasa Murakami, the chairman of a committee studying deer protection and management plans, presented plans to allow lethal deer culling in a “buffer zone.”

While wild deer are protected within and around Nara Park, up to 180 animals have been killed annually in a “controlled zone” outside the protected areas to prevent the animals from damaging crops.

Between the protected areas and the controlled zone lies the buffer zone in which deer cannot be killed, but are caught alive. The animals are kept in a designated fenced area within Nara Park.

Over the coming year, committee members will consider conditions and standards for allowing deer to be culled in the buffer zone.

Murakami said he believes that the prefecture can gain public understanding for the new policy if it is carefully explained.

About 270 captured deer are currently being taken care of in the fenced area by the Nara Deer Preservation Foundation.

However, a veterinarian at the foundation alerted authorities last summer that many deer at the facility had become emaciated or died of starvation.

Prefectural and municipal officials concluded that deer had been kept in poor conditions at the overcrowded facility.

At the end of last year, Nara Governor Makoto Yamashita said the prefecture has no other choice but to expand the areas in which deer can be exterminated to reduce the number of animals kept in the fenced area.

Legend says the deity at Kasuga Taisha shrine, located in Nara Park, arrived on a divine deer. Deer in the former area of Nara city before its merger have been designated as natural monuments and protected since 1957.

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