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capacity and the populations of animals that depend on plants. When 

 weather conditions return to average, crowding leads to stress and 

 competition for food, space, and mates and permits the spread of 

 diseases. Winter food supplies become inadequate and malnutrition, 

 diseases, and predators take heavy tolls. In turn, populations of wolves 

 and other predators that feed on the plant eaters are regulated by the 

 abundance or scarcity of the animals on which they feed. 



Overpopulations can be especially disastrous to large browsing and 

 grazing mammals, like deer and elk. Where overabundant, such animals 

 can cause great damage to their own habitats, resulting in a much 

 reduced carrying capacity for many years. That is what happened to the 

 Pennsylvania deer herd in the late 1920's. Hundreds of thousands of 

 deer died of starvation and disease in a series of bitter winters before the 

 numbers could be lowered by regulated hunting to the carrying capacity 

 of the winter range. 



Even in some wildlife refuges and national parks, elk and deer herds 

 must be thinned to prevent overabundant animals from destroying their 

 food supplies and damaging the food supplies of other species. The 

 lesson here is that man and his activities have so interrupted wildlife's 

 natural cycles and systems in most places that only through deliberate 

 management can mankind assure the survival of most species of wildlife. 



