To the Editor:

In “Hoping that Consolidation Brings End to White Buffalo Deer Culling” (Town Topics March 12), Mr. Laznovsky makes the right arguments about the squandering of tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars on deer killing in the eleventh year of the so-called “management program,” and the invalid link between deer and Lyme disease.

With respect to the economic argument, it is hard to miss the connection between the anguished cries of the school board members and others (“Princetonians among those protesting Christie’s ‘Reverse Robin Hood Budget,” Town Topics March 14) on the one hand, about diminished resources for education, and on the other, money squandered for the extermination of deer. The specious argument made by Phyllis Marchand in 2002 that Princeton’s program “is bringing the township’s residents much needed relief from the deer” (New York Times, March 10, 2002) remains specious to this day. Princeton should put these taxpayer dollars not into the extermination of deer, but into needed investments to educate its children.

On one point I disagree with Mr. Laznovsky, however. It will take more than hope to effect change. Princeton’s own Einstein wrote: “Our task must be to free ourselves … by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty.” The task of a consolidated Princeton is to end the ludicrous “deer cull” once and for all, by active citizen involvement through the democratic process.

Sheila M. MacRae
Orchid Court