The White-tail Conundrum

Puddock Hill Journal #57: Fighting Odocoileus virginianus in order to save nature.

I can appreciate the elegant, athletic beauty of a white-tailed deer as well as the next guy—perhaps more so, since I’m a bit of a sensitive soul deep down. On a scientific level, in a balanced world, all herbivores have their role to play.

But what happens in an unbalanced world?

If they don’t die from senescence, most deer in our area (probably in the entirety of the Northeast) lose their lives to automobile collisions. Last month, a doe lay dead in the road near our house for several days. When a neighbor called the county, she was told they had eleven deer to remove in a small territory in one weekend. Shortly after that carcass had been cleaned up, I saw four dead deer by the side of the road on a drive of less than ten miles. Anyone out in October might easily have had the same experience on any drive of that distance.

Of course, an unbalanced world leads to much more than dangerous roads. We can’t talk about the degradation of ecosystems on the East Coast without considering the damage deer do to the ecology. Their browsing sets back native plants, making more space for invasive species. Bucks kill or deform young trees by rubbing. On a greater scale, Odocoileus virginianus has destroyed the forest understory in my region as well as many others.

In a post on her The Art of Ecology blog, Marissa Jacobs (also based in Chester County, PA) well describes the problem:

White-tailed deer like to browse on young buds and plant tissue. In moderation, this helps prune the plants and stimulate growth, however when there are too many deer, they eat too much for the tree to recover. This limits tree and understory (the young plants) biodiversity. When the understory is over-eaten, there is not enough other plant life to provide for the numerous other wildlife species that rely on a healthy forest environment. Raccoons, opossums, skunks, fox, squirrels, and rodents would love to utilize a healthy forest, but are often forced to turn elsewhere and find their way to our trashcans.

Over-browsing can also impact the ability of animals to find shelter. Without thickets, shrubs, and other understory growth, prey animals won’t have great hiding places. Birds lose nesting habitat and reptiles, such as the Eastern Box turtle, have to search elsewhere for places to lay their eggs.

In fifteen years at Puddock Hill—the last few following the precepts of backyard stewardship—I have learned, through reading and personal observation, what harm deer can do. We have a local herd of 15-20 animals that pass back and forth twice a day—west to east every morning, east to west every evening. So I knew any attempt to restore the landscape with native plantings would require a deer fence.