FARMERS and experts have called for a co-ordinated deer cull across Hampshire after the county was named as the UK’s worst blackspot for deer accidents.

They say the county’s deer population – dominated by the fallow and roe species – is spiralling out of control, damaging woodland and creating a potential death trap on our roads.

One radical solution is to reintroduce the deer’s natural predator, the lynx, which was hunted to extinction in Britain 500 years ago.

Jochen Langbein, who is leading a national study to centrally collect data on all accidents involving deer, revealed there were more than 1,000 deer collisions on Hampshire’s r o a d s e v e r y year.

“Only a b o u t one in 100 deer collisions that we record result in a human injury, but Hampshire is worse than any other county in the UK,” Dr Langbein, from the Deer Collision Project, said.

“We have about 15 to 20 injuries to humans every year in the county. People think they’re freak accidents but they happen as many as 200 times a day nationwide.”

In 2006 a father was killed on the A35, on the edge of the New Forest, when a deer was thrown into the path of his car after being hit by vehicle travelling in the opposite direction.

However, the problem is not confined to the New Forest, where numbers are controlled by a partnership of authorities led by the Forestry Commission.

“It would be wrong to say the problem is just in the New Forest, because it is in all of Hampshire, right the way through to Basingstoke, Hook, Fleet and down to Portsmouth and Southampton,” Dr Langbein said.

“A lot of people think they just have to be careful when they drive in the New Forest, but you have to be careful anywhere – even on the edge of the big cities.”

National Farmers’ Union south-east spokesman Isobel Bretherton said deer demolished crops, damaged woodland and were a potential reservoir of disease.

While responsibility for controlling numbers falls to landowners, Ms Bretherton said a co-ordinated response was needed.

“The NFU believes that the wild deer population in the south-east is at the highest it has ever been and farmers do say deer are increasingly out of control,”

she said.

“There is certainly a need for a single body to take responsibility and it does look as though there is a need for more culling.”

Jamie Cordery, from the Deer Initiative south-east, a Government-funded organisation that helps landowners control numbers, said one current deer hotspot was in woodland north of the New Forest.

“Hampshire’s deer population should be managed, but how is entirely in the hands of the landowner and different people have different objectives,” he said.

“We are not calling for a massive cull, but in hotspots we need neighbouring landowners to co-operate.”

According to the most recent estimates, there are now two million wild deer in the UK and their numbers have doubled over the past ten years.

The most radical solution is to reintroduce the lynx into Britain.

East Anglia and the Highlands and Southern Uplands of Scotland have already been identified as prime candidates by ecologists.

Dr David Hetherington, from Aberdeen University, said: “While there are undoubtedly areas of Hampshire, such as the New Forest, which would be good habitat for lynx, the problem is the amount of habitat there is.

“I think a few lynx could survive in Hampshire and they would be more than happy feeding on deer, but I doubt there is enough habitat for a viable population in the longer term.”