“Deer” Nashville,

“Deer” Nashville,

Radnor Lake (State Natural Area) and the Warner Parks in Nashville are almost petting zoos for white-tailed deer at this point because hunting is not allowed in the city. Of course there are good safety reasons for this, but seriously, the forests here are not regenerating properly according to local naturalists and park rangers I’ve listened to. This morning, I read a good article (from Virginia, but applicable in it’s entirety here in Tennessee) that does a good job of succinctly explaining why.

The article – ( http://potomaclocal.com/2013/03/02/deer-population-a-challenge-for-area-forests/ )

In a nutshell: no large predators and limited hunting means there are now too many deer and they eat too much native undergrowth, disrupting natural forest succession, decreasing overall biodiversity, and allowing invasive species to flourish which can further disrupt forest succession and biodiversity retention. The problem is particularly acute in fragmented suburban areas (like much of Middle Tennessee).

We should have a season for specially trained/licensed sharpshooters and bow hunters to harvest deer for meat at least one or two weeks a year in suburban/park areas, and perhaps raise the limits of how many deer can be taken per hunter, especially in these suburban/park/natural areas with artificially higher deer populations. I don’t pretend to know all of the public safety precautions that would need to be taken or what the crazy politics of this issue would be, but I’m pretty sure that suburban deer culling could be done safely and also take into account the wishes and concerns of individual  property owners. Scientific monitoring tells us that the deer population is too high, just as it would warn us if the deer population was becoming too low. Adjustments should be made accordingly.

Perhaps municipal or county governments could mandate that a certain percentage of the venison be donated to local food security organizations for distribution to people needing food assistance. Perhaps the state could refund the hunting license fees of those hunters who participated in a “suburban hunter safety education” course and then killed at least one adult deer in a designated suburban area/park. I’m sure that others who know more about hunting than I do could come up with some other/better incentives.

I tried to look into the relevant laws, and though the State of Tennessee does not prevent me from hunting on my private property in season, my municipal government does forbid me from discharging a firearm in my suburban backyard, and certainly forbids me from doing so in a city park. I totally understand the reasons why and agree with them, but I think there could be well regulated exceptions for the purpose of culling the out of control deer population. Chemical deer reproduction control methods do exist, but are expensive. Most hunters I know would be happy to shoot a couple more deer each year for free.

Deer at Radnor Lake SNA in suburban Nashville, TN
-photo source- (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikerhicks/5389077290/)

Of course another option would be to reintroduce large predators (bears, wolves, cougars, etc) to the Nashville suburbs, but given how freaked out people already are by coyotes (which are not controlling the deer population), that course of action seems even less likely than allowing suburban/city-park sharpshooters. But, just to argue the idea for a second, the predator reintroduction approach would help address an issue not even mentioned in the article, namely that natural predation would actually improve the health and genetic stock of the deer population through the process of natural selection. A couple of cougars roaming around suburban Nashville would kill a good number of young, old, weak and/or sick deer, thus improving the quality of the herd… and also eating people’s pets, scaring people (if not attacking them), and generally creating hysteria.

Thirdly, there’s always the option of making suburban sprawl and fragementation obsolete through a radical redesign of our cities and other communities, thus reducing the edge effects which so favor deer, and addressing a host of human development issues at the same time. Finally, we could just make all the people on the planet disappear next week and then deer/predators would quickly reestablish an equilibrium without us.

Thus, for what I think are obvious reasons, I believe that well trained suburban deer hunters are really the best short term option for dealing with the local deer overpopulation issue.

I’ve got tons of deer in my wooded yard (near Radnor Lake in South Nashville). They’re majestic and fascinating in their own way, just as most animals in the wild are. I like to watch them, and seeing them makes me feel like I am more “in nature.” As many others do, I enjoy that feeling, but in reality there is nothing natural about seeing so many deer all the time, and the forests they are living in are becoming more endangered too. So, in the interest of ecological balance, I would also be happy to eat the deer, or learn to hunt them myself, or have other people kill/eat them. A lot of gardeners and farmers would also be happy to see a smaller deer population. The goal I’m espousing is not to eliminate deer, but to bring their numbers down to a scientifically determined, ecologically sustainable population size. Rock Creek Park in suburban Washington, DC provides a good example of how one agency has decided to deal with this issue: http://www.nps.gov/rocr/parkmgmt/upload/Deer-Management-FAQ-Revised-May-31-2012-FINAL-VERSION.pdf .

Deer are not endangered in 2013, indeed quite the opposite. Killing more deer, especially in suburban areas, would not only be good for deer, but it would be good for our forests, native plants, and all the other animals and insects that depend on our native plants/forests.

I haven’t yet done enough research yet to understand fully how deer management decisions are made in Tennessee. Are the current limits/seasons based on maintaining a large deer herd with particular qualities for hunters, or is it based on the health of the deer herd, or is it based on maintaining the natural balance of deer in the larger environment? Reading through the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency’s website on white-tailed deer, it appears that the deer population is managed with a greater emphasis on maintaining hunting stock  than on maintaining ecological balance. Is this true? The ecological functioning of forest areas fragmented by suburban development are already far from normal even without the presence of abnormally high numbers of large herbivorous browsers. This is one aspect of poor forest health that shouldn’t be so hard to fix.

Venison anyone?

~ by tchibanga2000 on March 3, 2013.