NEREC1001: Piloting a Regional Research and Educational Approach to Integrated Deer Damage Management
Statement of Issues and Justification
Wildlife and the industry associated with its many attributes create billions of dollars in economic growth every year in the United States. However, there is also a human and economic toll stemming from wildlife populations and their interactions with the American public. According to a November 2001 report released by the General Accounting Office at the request of Congress, the cost of wildlife-related damage to agriculture has been estimated to be as high as $1.6 billion annually. The Insurance Information Institute estimates deer-automobile collisions occur at a rate of 500,000 per year, resulting in over $1 billion worth of vehicular damages, 29,000 human injuries, and 200 human fatalities each year. A 1995 report (Conover et al. 1995) indicated that the actual number of deer-vehicle collisions could exceed 1.5 million per year because less than 50% of collisions are reported to insurance companies or law enforcement agencies. Additionally, over 175,000 cases of Lyme disease have been diagnosed since 1980 and more than 16,000 new cases are reported each year. Deer serve as a primary host for the tick that transmits the disease to humans.A survey conducted by wildlife scientists at Cornell, Penn State, and Rutgers between September and November 2001 suggested that the damage caused by wildlife on agricultural crops, vehicles, and human lives may be much higher. Deer are having an especially acute impact in the northeast United States corridor with its expanding rural-suburban interface and diminishing effectiveness of conventional management approaches. The estimated cost of deer browsing on agricultural and residential properties tops $243 million each year. Deer-vehicular damage in the region is estimated to cost $391 million annually. Over half of the new Lyme disease cases reported in the U.S. in recent years have been in the Northeast, attributed mainly to the abundance of deer and their proximity to humans.
Ecologically, many forests in the Northeast have significantly altered understories due to heavy browsing by deer, making forest regeneration difficult. The loss of forest understory results in reduced plant and wildlife diversity and a significant shift in forest structure and composition. Deer preferentially eat ash, maple, and oak seedlings, allowing deer-resistant, low-value American beech, striped maple, or ferns to flourish. In many areas of the Northeast, native vegetation that is browsed may be replaced by invasive, exotic species (i.e., Japanese barberry, garlic mustard, etc.), thereby further negatively impacting our forests.
The application of currently available management techniques (i.e., hunting, sharp-shooting, etc.) to manage deer populations may be reduced or eliminated as a result of cost effectiveness, human safety concerns, or lack of community support. Research on wildlife fertility control for communities where hunting is neither feasible nor practical was initiated during the last decade. However, all vaccines are still experimental and none are commercially available. Cost of booster treatments for individual deer and difficulty of capture, among other factors, has limited practical application of this technology on the scale needed to curb the problems across the Northeast landscape.
It is imperative that an innovative, science-based research and public outreach approach be designed to enable effective management of overabundant deer populations and reduce deer-human conflicts and their ecological impacts. The full extent of the problem is not clearly known and the traditional solutions, in many cases, are not applicable to an urban or suburban community. The similarities of concerns and landscapes across the Northeast suggest a regional approach to solving the problem. However, there is no regional funding source to support implementation of the research and education program needed on such a large scale.
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