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Community Corner

OK, Let's Talk About Those Deer

A seeming choice between Bambi and preserving the cherished reservation.

We all love deer–well, most of us do, except when they’re eating our gardens. It’s cultural conditioning that must have taken root long before Walt Disney first released Bambi. They are beautiful creatures–sleek, elegant and shy. The term “doe-eyed” is synonymous with dewy innocence. Every time I startle a deer on my daily hike in the South Mountain Reservation, we both stop and, for as long as I can manage it, I stand stock still and simply stare.

I have deep reverence for wildlife, and deep reservations about the deer hunt which was recently approved for the third year in a row by Maplewood, Millburn and West Orange, the three communities whose votes directly affect affairs in the Reservation. 

On a recent walk in the woods with Dennis Percher and Tricia Zimic, the South Mountain Reservation Forest Regeneration Project’s impassioned leaders, I began to understand what the deer hunt was all about. As inconceivable as it seems, the beautiful forest that surrounds us is dying.

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“Forty or fifty years ago, when you walked off trail in the Reservation, you could get lost,” says Percher, chairman of the South Mountain Conservancy. “You should be frightened to go off trail.  But look, there’s nothing obscuring your sight.”

Where has all the undergrowth gone? According to Michael Van Clef, an ecologist who originally monitored the forest’s health and whose reports have helped guide the regeneration project, New Jersey deer population is twice as high as it was before European settlement.

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In the South Mountain Reservation, deer have reduced the natural undergrowth to tatters and nipped tree saplings before they can bud. “It’s a slow-motion death,” says Van Clef. “We can’t see it in human terms.  But the trees aren’t replacing themselves.” Through over-foraging, the deer have also destroyed vital habitat for numerous other native species.

In June 2008, the South Mountain Reservation was the subject of a BioBlitz, an intense 24-hour inventory of local plant and animal species. According to Tricia Zimic, the number of species was markedly lower when compared with an inventory conducted in the 1970s by biologist Rick Radis.

“Loss of biodiversity effects entire layers of an ecosystem,” says Percher. “The food chain is built on this.  The forest feels the ripple effects from the over-browsing deer all across the system.” At the South Mountain Reservation, the chain has broken down.

Van Clef points to vivid examples elsewhere in the state like Old Short Hills Park where the forest canopy completely fails to close. Non-native shrubs and vines are invading the park. “Deer prefer native species to invasives,” he explains. “Deer are an edge species rather than a forest species. We’ve essentially optimized their natural habitat by giving them all kinds of extra food from our gardens. We’ve removed all the natural predators like cougar, wolves and bears. We have ‘no go zones’ for hunting because of development. We’re putting insufficient pressure on them and the deer are thriving.”

An overabundant deer population affects more than just the forest. Deer aid in the spread of Lyme’s Disease, cause car accidents, destroy crops and, much as I love them, they frequently nibble all the flowers off the plants in my own garden.

In order to set things back in balance, expert consensus says that the deer population must be reduced. This year’s hunt aims at dropping deer numbers in the Reservation to 20 per square mile.  The optimum ratio for forest regeneration is something closer to four or five deer per square mile.  “Right now we have eight times that many,” Percher says.  

To be sure, this isn’t a trophy hunt. Van Clef’s most recent report emphasizes that, to control population growth, the cull should focus primarily on antlerless (i.e., female) deer. At the moment, females outnumber males by as much as 15 to 1.

Opponents to the cull argue for a more humane solution like sterilization using the recently USDA-approved drug GonaCon. But Percher is skeptical that sterilization can work in the Reservation.

“There have been some success stories in small populations in completely contained environments,” he says. “But you have to get 90% of the deer with a viscous injection. You have to hold down the deer which means you need to use tranquilizers and track them until they fall. Then you have to mark them. And you have to repeat the whole process in successive years. It’s prohibitive given the Reservation’s 2000 acres and porous boundaries.”

Meanwhile, the regeneration project has a second line of attack. Forty-two fenced enclosures have popped up all over the Reservation where native species are being reintroduced and invasives removed. In the two years since the project began, there have already been improvements. “We’ve seen insects return in these protected areas,” Zimic says, gesturing around the 14 acre fenced-in Wildflower and Forest Preserve just behind the Dog Park. “There are birds. Soon there will be mammals. You should see it in the spring. It’s filled with wildflowers.”

Within three to five years, native plants are expected to crowd out invasives within the regeneration sites. In five to ten years, seeding should spread beyond the enclosures.

But as regeneration spreads, what’s to keep the deer from eating everything again?

“That’s what is called stewardship,” says Van Clef. “Taking care of nature. There has to be cyclical maintenance if we want a healthy forest without reintroducing natural predators. In fact, at this point, it wouldn’t even matter if we put predators back into the environment. There are so many deer, they wouldn’t do the trick. We have to intervene.”

The concept of the hunt is difficult to accept. I must admit that for the past two Februarys, I haven’t gone into the woods during the hunt at all, even on days when they weren’t shooting.

For most of us, the resounding echo of rifle shot is inseparable from the tragic image of the lifeless heap that had once been Bambi’s gentle mother. It’s a tribute to human compassion that we care so much. “But we’re favoring a species that’s big and charismatic. There are hundreds of other species that aren’t available in the forest,” Van Clef says.

Zimic agrees. “We can’t have just one animal and have a healthy ecosystem. We have to love all animals.”


 

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