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FOREST CONSERVATION NEWS TODAY
Over-Abundant Deer Send Ecosystems and Biodiversity Into Chaos
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November 11, 2002
OVERVIEW & COMMENTARY by Forests.org
Throughout most of America, over-abundant deer are vermin that
threaten species and ecosystem sustainability. Dr. Tom Rooney, an
expert on the ecological impacts of deer from the University of
Wisconsin and Forests.org board member, notes that "in some parts of
the United States deer are the primary threat to biodiversity. In
Pennsylvania we observed that deer had eliminated 80% of all plant
species from an old growth forest in 65 years."
The New York Times article below, while mostly focusing upon the
impacts of deer over-abundance on the suburban environment, more
significantly notes that "fast-multiplying herds are altering the
ecology of forests, stripping them of native vegetation and
eliminating niches for other wildlife." Dr. William J. McShea, who
is quoted extensively in the article, correctly and regrettably notes
"deer are an edge species, and the world is one big edge now." With
deer densities reaching hundreds per square mile, when densities
exceeding 15 to 20 per square mile degrade ecosystems, deer over-
abundance ranks along side, or even surpasses, the threat to
biodiversity and ecosystems posed by urban sprawl, commercial logging
and other more recognized environmental concerns.
Ecological sustainability in the U.S. depends upon lowering deer
densities dramatically across most landscapes. Super abundant deer
herds profoundly change ecosystems for the worse and are indicative of
"an ecosystem (that) is out of whack." The numbers of deer across the
U.S. are so excessive that continental scale ecological sustainability
is threatened. Balance must be restored. The most realistic way to
do that in the short term is for hunters to replace the country's long-
vanished predators. Dr. Rooney notes that "the system is out of
balance" and "hunters need to rise to the challenge and see the
importance of hunting does."
Here in my home state of Wisconsin, mad deer disease (otherwise known
as chronic wasting disease) is indicative of society's inability to
manage deer populations, and the risks posed when too many of one
species are in close proximity. Deer are only rivaled by Homo sapiens
in this regard. In the longer term, fragmented and degraded forests
must be allowed to age, expand and be ecologically restored wherever
possible - creating more interior ecological core areas suitable for
viable populations of large predators. Again, in the short term,
emphasis must be upon reducing deer densities through encouraging more
hunting of does.
It is not melodramatic to suggest that as mad deer disease spreads,
species are driven to extinction, and ecosystems are collapsing; that
the United States government may need to call up the National Guard to
address this dramatic domestic threat to our ecological security. In
the meantime - if you love forests and support ecological
sustainability, get out and hunt deer.
g.b.
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Title: Out of Control, Deer Send Ecosystem Into Chaos
Source: Copyright 2002 New York Times
Date: November 12, 2002
Byline: ANDREW C. REVKIN
RONT ROYAL, Va. - In Posey Hollow, tucked into the Blue Ridge
Mountains, Dr. William J. McShea was inspecting a forest primeval -
10 acres of oaks, wild yam vines, seedlings and shrubs that made an
ideal home for nesting songbirds and scurrying small mammals.
But he had to look through an eight-foot deer fence to see it. Where
he stood, the forest was trimmed from eye level to earth as if by an
army of obsessive landscapers. Mature trees stood unharmed, but oak
seedlings were nipped in the bud. The only things thriving were
Japanese barberry and other nonnative flora, plants that deer cannot
digest.
In the last decade, from the Rockies to New England and the Deep
South, rural and suburban areas have been beset by white-tailed deer
gnawing shrubbery and crops, spreading disease and causing hundreds of
thousands of auto wrecks.
But the deer problem has proved even more profound, biologists say.
Fast-multiplying herds are altering the ecology of forests, stripping
them of native vegetation and eliminating niches for other wildlife.
Varmints of old were mainly predators, Dr. McShea said, but this is
the age of the marauding herbivore.
"I don't want to paint deer as Eastern devils," said Dr. McShea, a
wildlife biologist associated with the National Zoo in Washington,
"but this is indicative of what happens when an ecosystem is out of
whack." The damage is worse than anyone expected, he and other
scientists say.
In the West, mule deer and blacktailed deer sometimes cause problems,
but it is mainly in the more densely suburbanized East and Midwest
where whitetails are causing the most trouble for people and
ecosystems.
Research like that under way here, where several deer-free plots have
been studied for more than a decade, has shown how deer can profoundly
change forests.
In Wisconsin, deer have prevented restoration of native white cedar,
whose seedlings they eagerly seek out. In Minnesota, hemlocks are
nibbled away before they can grow. Near New Haven, one biologist has
found foot-high cedars that turned out to be 12 years old but were as
stunted as a carefully pruned bonsai.
The damage "drives me to my knees," said Dr. Gary L. Alt, a wildlife
biologist and lifelong hunter on the Pennsylvania Game Commission.
"We've got to balance deer with habitat," Dr. Alt said. "If we don't,
everything will be lost. The deer population will not be healthy and
scores of other species will suffer."
Except in a few favorable situations, sharpshooting, trapping, birth-
control darts, repellents and other tactics are not having a big
impact, he and other experts say.
Expanded hunting, considered by many experts to be the best hope of
controlling numbers, has its limits as well. For example, most
hunters, and most states' hunting regulations, still favor shooting
bucks, even though the best way to control populations is to kill
females.
Some states are changing regulations in ways that could cut deer
numbers, but hunters are resisting. Others are expanding seasons and
the number of deer a hunter can kill, but federal wildlife officials
note that hunters are a graying population, with fewer each year to
make a dent. In any case, controlled hunts staged in suburbs often run
up against strident opposition from animal welfare groups.
Faced with ever-rising deer numbers and few solutions, some biologists
are advising people to focus more on changing their own behavior and
attitudes than on hoping for a sudden answer to the deer problem.
"People should finally get used to having deer around and adjust to
that," said Dr. Allen T. Rutberg, a senior research scientist with the
Humane Society of the United States and a professor at the Tufts
University veterinary school. "They're going to be a fact of life,
like drought and storms."
Drawn to the Suburbs
People long ago wiped out the wolves and other predators that kept
deer populations in check. Then suburbanization created a browser's
paradise: a vast patchwork of well-watered, fertilizer-fattened
plantings to feed on and vest-pocket forests to hide in, with hunters
banished to more distant woods.
"Deer are an edge species," Dr. McShea said, "and the world is one big
edge now."
Deer pose problems because they are both loved and loathed - Bambi to
children and Godzilla to gardeners.
Web sites devoted to deer are as diverse as whitetailsunlimited.org
and deer-off.com.
Deer generate more than $10 billion a year in revenue related to
wildlife watching and hunting, federal wildlife officials say. But
they spread Lyme disease and livestock ailments. They are struck by
cars, trucks and motorcycles more than a million times a year, with
the accidents killing more than 100 people annually and causing more
than $1 billion in damage.
The human toll makes deer deadlier than sharks, alligators, bears and
rattlesnakes combined.
They also devour plantings, saplings and crops, causing nearly $1
billion in farm, garden and timber damage, federal officials say. One
deer can consume a ton and a half of greenery a year.
Estimates range widely, but there were probably at least 20 million
whitetails across a wide swath of North America several centuries ago.
Even Thomas Jefferson had to defend his Monticello vegetable gardens
with a 10-foot-tall planked fence.
Then came an era of unbridled hunting for commercial venison sales and
the widespread displacement of forests by farms, and by the 20th-
century, deer were nearly eliminated from every corner of their range.
So, prompted by pleas from hunters, state officials worked hard to
restore deer. For example, the deer now clearing brush in Posey Hollow
descend from stock trucked to Virginia decades ago from Arkansas.
Such efforts have succeeded beyond anyone's wildest dreams. The
national whitetail population has risen from a low of about 500,000 in
1900 to something like the 20 million of Jefferson's time.
But they are concentrated in smaller patches of habitat, scientists
say. Generally, biologists say, when deer exceed 15 to 20 per square
mile, ecosystems begin to degrade, and today deer number in the
hundreds per square mile in some places.
Thinning the Herd
In a few places, the animals are relatively easy to kill, deport or
sterilize. But these methods have significant limitations.
Contraception, promoted for years by the Humane Society and other
animal welfare groups, has effectively reduced some deer populations
in places like Fire Island in New York, but usually only where
wildlife biologists have permission to go into every backyard to dart
all the does in a particular population. Female deer rarely wander far
from where they were born, so they are relatively easy to find.
Elsewhere, though, any undarted does are quickly able to rebuild
herds. Also, the current contraceptive vaccine must be readministered
every year, but each year the darted does become a bit more wary and
elusive, experts say.
Sharpshooting by professional marksmen or trained police officers has
worked in parts of Princeton, Cleveland, Philadelphia and other
communities that accept lethal controls. But in Princeton, the rifle-
toting biologists doing the culling could not shoot animals in the
most densely populated neighborhoods, so they had to resort to
capturing dozens with nets and killing them with a device similar to
the gunlike bolts used to slaughter cattle in stockyards.
Biologists have found that trapping deer this way greatly increases
their stress compared with a bullet to the brain, and animal welfare
groups have aggressively protested the method.
Defending Plants
The deficiencies of these strategies have left homeowners and
landscapers struggling to keep deer away from their plantings, which
are prime deer fodder because they are fattened with ample fertilizer
and water.
In wealthy neighborhoods north of New York City or around Washington,
it is not uncommon to see high black-mesh fences enclosing entire
estates.
Gardeners have tried an array of repellents, containing rotten-egg
essence, hot pepper extracts and even lion excrement. They usually
work for a while but need to be replenished frequently.
In some areas beset by deer, gardeners and landscape designers are
being encouraged to move from defending lush plantings to changing
what they plant, in hopes of discouraging hungry
The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station in New Haven recently
published a survey listing dozens of flower and shrub varieties that
gardeners in the state found were least likely to be eaten by deer. By
switching from sunflowers, tulips and roses to butterfly bush,
marigolds, poppies and lavender, gardeners can maintain attractive
yards without attracting deer, the study's author, Dr. Jeffrey S.
Ward, said.
But biologists and gardeners have learned that if deer are hungry
enough they will eat any plant.
A new type of fencing made by a Canadian company, ElectroBraid,
creates a psychological barrier to deer by shocking them as they nudge
forward with their delicate noses. For the moment, it is only
practical in places like airfields, where deer have been struck by
more than 500 aircraft over the last decade, including fighter jets
and Boeing 737's, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
In many communities, new policies aimed at changing human behavior
around deer have met with resistance. For example, in many communities
ravaged by azalea-munching deer some homeowners still cannot resist
putting out 50-pound sacks of corn to attract the graceful creatures.
Many suburbs, including Princeton and Lakeway, Tex., have banned the
practice, but some deer lovers unabashedly continue to feed.
"I feed them when I want to feed them," said Judy Samouce of Lakeway,
a fast-growing Austin suburb, tucked on the edge of the deer-thick
Edwards Plateau. The deer were what attracted her to the area.
There is some progress in places. The death toll on roads and highways
in Princeton has dropped sharply since culling began there two years
ago. Accidents have also been reduced in Lakeway, which trapped more
than 1,400 deer over the last several years and deported them to
ranches in northern Mexico, where officials were eager to restore deer
populations. This year, though, Lakeway officials say they are running
out of ranches willing to take deer.
Changing Hunters' Habits
In most places around the country, many wildlife experts say, the
biggest effect on deer populations will probably come through changing
hunting practices.
The Sand County Foundation, a Wisconsin land conservation group, has a
decade-old program allowing hunters to kill deer on preserve and
private lands, as long as they shoot a doe or two before taking a
buck.
"The whitetail deer is a lovely, engaging animal, and it thrills me to
see them, even now when they're causing so much trouble," said Dr.
Brent M. Haglund, the president of the foundation. But now that
numbers are so excessive, balance must be restored, Dr. Haglund said,
and the only realistic way to do that is for hunters to replace the
country's long-vanished predators.
The cost of doing nothing has risen too far, he said. "Deer collisions
are killing people," he said. "That to me is the most legitimate
reason to look for sound, sustainable ways to reduce deer density."
In Pennsylvania, where exploding deer populations have erased tree
seedlings and trillium and other wildflowers from many forests, game
officials have begun reshaping hunting regulations, less to suit the
desires of hunters for ever-bigger herds and more to suit the needs of
ailing ecosystems.
The main changes are designed to encourage the shooting of does
instead of bucks. This initially rankled many hunters. Dr. Alt, on the
Pennsylvania Game Commission, said he used to think his biggest on-
the-job hazard was crawling into a den to study hibernating bears. But
when he joined the commission three years ago, he said, he was heckled
and hounded at crammed public meetings where angry hunters attacked
his ecological approach to deer.
Attitudes have started to change, he said. Expanded seasons for
antlerless deer, most of them female, are becoming popular and are
expected gradually to reverse the proportions of killed male and
female deer. Eventually that should stabilize the herds.
But the slow spread of chronic wasting disease, a brain infection of
deer and elk similar to mad cow disease, may impede efforts to use
hunters to manage deer.
In Wisconsin, where the disease most recently appeared, applications
for hunting licenses have dropped 25 percent to 30 percent this year,
said Peter J. Gerl, the executive director of Whitetails Unlimited, a
national private hunting group based there.
Officials say there is no evidence that the disease can cross to
humans. But some have advised people to avoid meat from deer taken in
areas where the disease has been found and to use caution in
butchering their animals, avoiding contact with brain or other tissues
that could hold the viruslike protein particles that cause the
illness.
This fall, hunters have been helping Wisconsin officials kill 25,000
or more deer in the zone where about 3 percent of a sample of deer
tested positive for the infection. But in the long run, the outbreak
could discourage hunting in the state, harming the economy and
increasing deer numbers.
Experimental Efforts
Ultimately, even many deer lovers say, more hard-nosed intervention,
either aimed at stopping reproduction or increasing mortality, will be
needed.
One possibility is an experimental single-shot vaccine that could
cause does to stop producing eggs for years, eliminating the need for
annual darting. State biologists in Connecticut are trying a new
approach, trapping dominant males and using chemical injections to
sterilize them. Their hope is that these bucks continue to shield
harems of does from competitors in the fall mating season without
being able to inseminate the females themselves.
But these approaches will require years of testing.
Dr. McShea is experimenting on his Front Royal plots with an all-of-
the-above blend of sharpshooting to cut herd size and contraceptives
to keep herds under control.
If it works, he said, he may one day be able to leave behind 14 years
of work on an overabundant mammal and return full time to the research
that was his focus when he became a biologist: saving rare ones.
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