Conclusion
In spite of the frustrations and obstacles-personal, political, and bureaucratic-we remain optimistic about the future of wildlife contraception. It may be that we are simply optimistic people, but our optimism draws support from our experience. One of us (JFK) has been working on wildlife fertility control for almost thirty years and the other (ATR), for just under a decade; we have seen progress. Operationally, we've progressed in thirty years from capture, field surgery, and implantation with gobs of physiologically and environmentally suspect steroids to darting animals in the field at a distance of twenty-five to fifty yards with one-fifth of a teaspoon of biodegradable vaccine. In the public's eyes, wildlife contraception has gone from a joke to a pretty darned good idea, "if you can make it work."
Even in the deer meetings we've survived (Kirkpatrick and Turner 1997; Rutberg 1997), after all the shouting, blustering, posturing, and accusing is over, there's usually someone who takes us aside and says, "You know, these animals really are a problem, but it's not right to kill them, so if you could find another way to control them it would make people really, really, happy." For the animals-the old mares on Assateague, the old does on Fire Island, and the rest-and for those people in the back of the room, we should all be working to find that other way.
