Deer are the new Varmit

[Timber Loftis]

Hunters, schmunters, this is what we get for killing off all the predators. It'd take a million Elmer Fudds to fix the ecosystem problem caused by deer overpopulation. They're injecting does with contraception via dart gun these days. Wouldn't letting wolves and bear run in their once-natural habitats help solve this and other such problems? My favorite part of the passage: "The human toll makes deer deadlier than sharks, alligators, bears and rattlesnakes combined."

[note that this excerpt is not the complete article, which is from the NYTimes]

Out of Control, Deer Send Ecosystem Into Chaos
By 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.

[Redblueflare]

A ton and a half of greenery a *year*? It's a wonder people are just doing something about deer overpopulation now, and a longer hunting season would probably be the most effective way of dealing with them. I think... BTW my dad hit a deer a few days ago. *sigh* About $2000 worth of damage too.

[Thoran]

Wow... what a bunch of sensationalistic Deerberries. [img]smile.gif[/img]

It looks like they've got a lot of the facts right, but they're trying to make it sound like one of the Plagues of Egypt (In my best Charlton Heston voice : "SET MY HUNTERS FREE!!... it is hunter right? I can't seem to remember...").

I believe the problem has been caused by a combination of less hunting, more desireable deer ecosystems, and perhaps primarily by a succession of very mild winters. North eastern small farm rural areas are ideal Deer spawning grounds. They like open fields bordered closely by forest cover... and we've got that in spades. Even if the predator populations were healthy, most deer predators are only able to successfully hunt deer in hard winters. Coyote's and Wolves can't catch healty deer on open ground, they rely on deep crusted snow (which the deer step through but the canines stay on top of). Of course a hard winter would starve a lot of deer also (weakened deer obviously would also be attainable for predators).

The whole malarchy about nature "out of balance" or "out of control" is a bunch of... baloney. Nature is a series of oscillations about a setpoint. Right now the setpoint for deer has been moved up, the Northeast can support a significantly larger deer population than it could a hundred years ago, and the predation has lessened. It will take some time for the predator side of the equation to tip the scales back, and it's probably that it will be about a higher average population value, but that's what nature is good at... balancing complex equations.

The whole idea of deer "stripping native floura" is just more silliness. Of course they're doing that... that's what deer do, eat and procreate (and dent sheetmetal). In the eco-perfect past, the east was a large Mature forest (just like our eco-warriors would like it to be again... check out the Adirondacks... forever wild... forever virgin forest... forever poor hunting), in such a forest there IS NO edible ground cover, and the deer population was even MORE concentrated than it is today. Forests don't do a good job of feeding deer, which is why you tend to find them in your backyard, or in your crops.

I see this deer problem as a golden opportunity to reestablish native predators to the east, the only problem with this is that Wolves and Coyotes tend to avoid areas where humans are, and deer tend to gravitate there. So we've put the canine's into a situation where they are forced into settled areas... which will put them into conflict with humans (not much difference between a cow and a deer to a Wolf pack... except the cow is a lot easier to catch). In the end it'll be up to us to try to encourage hunters to go out and prune back the deer population, because IMO no other predator will be able to do the job.

I hate to admit it but I'm too much of a softie to kill things (I used to hunt as a kid but killing left a truly bitter taste in my mouth). I do go out as a pusher (drive the deer to where hunters are stationed), and I even do my share of gutting and dragging... but I just can't bring myself to pull the trigger. So this weekend I'll be out at deer camp, which is a family institution. I'll be enjoying Venisen Stew, Sausage, Steaks, Roasts, etc... and so I guess I'll be doing my part to control the deer population (besides offering up my convertible, which my brother was driving when he wacked a buck a couple weeks ago).

Well my dad called me last night and told me he had taken a 9 point this past weekend, Doe season will come after Buck season where he is, so then he can work on the doe population. I was too busy to get a license this year.

TL, yup letting wolves and bears run loose all over rural pennsylvania would work too, untill someones favorite child was killed by a bear or wolf then society would demand protection for their children...see there is a problem with letting predators run loose, nature isn't a perfect balance, there isn't a meal for each predator walking around when they need it...they take what they find when they need it..and if that is little johnny running around in his back yard...so be it. (You do realize there are a certain number of people killed by bears each year right? and not all of those people were doing anything they obviously shouldnt have been.) Your answer sort of implies that the situation is one dimensional....it isn't.

[Timber Loftis]

No, MagiK, you give me too little credit. If nature were in balance, a certain amount of little pink human babies *would* fall prey to predators, right? But, the loss of one human life to a predator does not give us the excuse to kill all predators. I can get to this logical conclusion without any of the absurd assumptions you imply I've made. Living in balance does not mean living free of danger - as you have pointed out often, nature is not all fuzzy bunnies and mossy forest floor. I'd expound on this topic, but P.B. Shelley did it so well in "Mont Blanc" I'll simply refer you there.

[Arvon]

Deer are nothing more than hooved rats. They destroy property, and crops, and they carry disease.

[Rokenn]

Originally posted by Arvon: Deer are nothing more than hooved rats. They destroy property, and crops, and they carry disease.

But they taste so good in chili! [img]smile.gif[/img]

Originally posted by Timber Loftis: No, MagiK, you give me too little credit. If nature were in balance, a certain amount of little pink human babies *would* fall prey to predators, right? But, the loss of one human life to a predator does not give us the excuse to kill all predators. I can get to this logical conclusion without any of the absurd assumptions you imply I've made. Living in balance does not mean living free of danger - as you have pointed out often, nature is not all fuzzy bunnies and mossy forest floor. I'd expound on this topic, but P.B. Shelley did it so well in "Mont Blanc" I'll simply refer you there.

See you can be logical about it..bet you wouldnt be quite so rational if it were YOUR child though, and people in communities grow together (I realize you are in Chicago now and don't live in a "community" but Im sure you can remember) People who see their beloved friends baby killed or mauled by predators, they take what ever steps are necessary to make them feel safe again. It is how things work int he real world, not in the dry emotionless world of acedemia and intellectuallism. Argue all you want, but most people won't allow themselves to live in the dangers that are presented by the predators you want brough back. We CAN and have controlled the Deer population quite well in PA without large numbers of predators.

Nice referall but not my style of writing. I'll pass

[ 11-12-2002, 01:26 PM: Message edited by: MagiK ]

[Timber Loftis]

I think you touch on a main point I've made before here, MagiK. It is the natural human instinct to go on a wolf hunt and round up 200 pelts every time someone's child is mauled. But, I argue we could and should use our big brains to realize the problems this rash action can cause later on. An outbreak of lime disease is no less pretty than a mauling. Moreover, I have seen the wilder side of nature, and am thankful for it though I was scared witless at the time.

I think if you pursue a tolerance of predator extermination, you are on the path to the nanny culture you hate so much. I mean, it's sad when broken glass and plastic wrappers kill infants also, but how far can you go with your efforts to control the world around you before you've entered silliness?

There is no doubt that the reintroduction of predators would result in human encounters, some fatal - as has proven out in efforts to reintroduce black bears, wolves, and grizzlies in various national forests. But, if we learn to live in harmony with these predators (and I don't mean bring a hippy guitar when you go in the woods, I mean bring a gun for protection), then I think we'd be better off in the long run. True, a cow or a kid will die upon occassion. But, look at the fatality tally resulting from too many deer running around the countryside. I think the deer in traffic are ultimately more dangerous to the population as a whole than a few predators. Just an IMHO.

[edit: And yes, all points-of-view shift when it is *my* kid or family member. The heights of emotion are not when we should make these decisions.]

[ 11-12-2002, 01:43 PM: Message edited by: Timber Loftis ]

[Attalus]

I think that the problem is not enough hunters. In Texas, whenever the deer population gets too big, the owner of the lease holds a get-together and kills a certain number, which the wildlife biologists have given him. I go, not to kill anything, but to lend my license and deer tags for the hunt lest we fall afoul of the Texas Game Warden.