Posted on 12/01/2004 4:36:16 AM PST by Tom D.
Landscape Architects: Deer Are Designing Future Look of Forests
MILLERTON, N.Y. -- The deer rose out of a distant swamp before dawn to browse in a hay field on a recent day. Then, as the sun came up, they made their way into a hillside forest, looking for concealment.
But the forest offered few hiding places. It has lots of tall, mature conifers and hardwoods, some 100 years old. Under them, virtually nothing grows -- no seedlings, no saplings, no bushes, and only a few ferns. The floor of this forest, like others around the country, has been stripped clean by whitetail deer.
It's deer-hunting season across the land -- a time when Americans are reminded that bountiful whitetails have their costs. The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety said earlier this month that animal-vehicle crashes, mostly involving deer, killed more than 200 people last year and caused an estimated $1 billion-plus in property damage. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says deer cause more than $400 million in yearly crop damage, not including home gardens and ornamental shrubbery.
But below the radar of most people, whitetails have been eating their way toward a more lasting legacy: They are wreaking ecological havoc in forests across the nation. They have become de facto forest managers, determining today what many forests will look like 100 years from now, say forest experts.
"Deer have stopped the regeneration of our forests in many areas," says Peter Pinchot, a Yale-educated director of the 1,400-acre Milford Experimental Forest on the Poconos Plateau in Pennsylvania. That means little trees aren't growing up to eventually replace big trees.
Example: oaks. Deer love acorns. Surviving acorns sprout seedlings. Deer love them, too. Surviving seedlings become saplings. Deer strip them of leaves and bark. They die.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I stopped by a friend's small meat processing place Sunday to pick up some vacuum sealed Hot Sticks (Summer Sausage) for another friend's kid in Iraq. He told me that the number of deer he's processed and has hanging in the locker totals over a thousand so far this deer season in Southwestern Illinois. And this is farming country, 35 miles from the Mississippi and downtown St. Louis.
Thirty years ago in Illinois the 30,000 deer tags were handed out by lottery. Bucks only. Deer Hunting was allowed in a few particular counties, maybe 20 out of 102. If you saw anything of deer, it was their tracks in the fields. Now they've overrun all the woodlots, the count of dead deer along any interstate and US highways is astronomical and the population just keeps growing. They can't be killed fast enough to stabilize the herd.
So....what's the bag limit for lawyers in NJ?
In IA, its one, but there's no limit to possession.
I'm sure you're correct. His writing style, however, borders on insulting. An article that has to explain that disrupted regeneration means 'baby trees aren't growing up to be big trees' belongs in the Weekly Reader, not The Wall Street Journal.
The "bucks only" program is too stupid for words.
Owl_Eagle
”Guns Before Butter.”
If the population is not stabilized by hunting, nature will step in and thin it with disease and starvation. The enviros will still oppose hunting even when there are thousands of scrawny diseased deer running around spreading who knows what. They will probably want to bring in wolves as a more environmentally friendly method of controlling the herd.
(I usually camoflage myself as an professor of Economics to try to blend into my environment.)
Someone with more knowledge might enlighten me on the subject....
The problem with "starvation" is it'll not happen with one hundred sixty acres of beans and three hundred acres of corn every ten miles or so.
In Northern Virginia, Loudoun County, the deer are like rabbits! I feel guilty that I haven't gotten a deer license yet!
I hate to tell you, but 12' ain't nearly high enough. In Wisconsin, the chain link fences around the apple orchards need to be about 16' to 20' high!
:-) I think your statement is just a touch over the top here!
I counted 24 in one herd just on one section of the ranch....one herd!
In Northern VA, in Prince William County, there are actually communities on the forest edge that have planted tons of OAK trees. When they mature and start dropping acorns, that'll have deer swarming the golf course.
Stupid.
Please do get your hunting license (or as sKerry would say "get you a huntin' license").
http://www.wisinfo.com/dailytribune/wrdtlocal/282134233411844.shtml
...Based on land area, deer densities are highest in east-central and west-central Wisconsin and in several units in northwestern Wisconsin. By comparison, densities are lower in southeastern and southwestern Wisconsin and in several west-central management units.
The statewide population averaged about 25 deer per square mile in 2003...
http://www.wnrmag.com/stories/1996/aug96/herd.htm
...Some leafy plants are stressed when deer populations swell to more than 12-15 animals per square mile.
...When deer populations rise above 20-25 per square mile, these trees are heavily browsed and have a tough time surviving.
...Every year, more than 40,000 deer collide with cars on highways and back roads. These accidents injure people, kill deer and cause an estimated $90 million in damage claims. Some auto body shops report 25-50 percent of their income is generated by car-deer collisions. The accident rates are high in most urban and rural areas where deer numbers exceed 25 per square mile.
On the good news side, they are very tasty!
Bottom line: We need more hunters, longer seasons, and less restrictive regulations.
Ya can't have it both ways.
Time to eliminate the hunting season on deer and allow hunters to shoot any deer any time they feel like it. Do thisd for a few years to bring the population back in balance. And the states should override the idiots on the local level who put roadblocks on hunting.
Hardly, they are vermin, giant rats, nothing more.
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