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 ...
A few months ago, Scientific American had an article about a similar situation in Yellowstone. Environmentalists for years wondered why no new forest growth was occurring. Then wolves were reintroduced and new forest growth was observed. The problem ws that Caribou were free roaming the park and eating every sapling they found so no new trees were growing. The reintroduction of wolves made the caribou stop their free roaming and stay in more strategically safe areas. The wolves also culled the herds so there was less demand for vegetative food. The net result was new forest growth and with the new forest growth, the populations of small mammals, birds and insects rebounded as well. The bottom line is that over protection of one herbivorous species can harm an entire ecosystem and ruin the environment therein.
Understand completely. My boyhood hunting areas are posted or developed. I haven't bow hunted in since I was 17, but That may be the only way to put meat in the freezer soon. I think we are reaching a tipping point where residential bow hunting will become a option to us and a "necessary evil" to those who created this situation in the first place.
Or Notre Dame.
As the Texas Yellow Pines are harvested, the land is replanted with Spruce Pines, a quicker growing but inferior quality wood.
Periodic controlled burns clean up forest floor to aid in growth and a straighter tree/product. The result is a forest of telephone poles void of wildlife. No animals and no birds. It is a strange sight to see.
Time to do some serious harvesting, of both deer and timber. Opening up large areas of canopy will stimulate new growth.
Why don't they eat MY poison ivy then? Lord knows, I have enough of it!
Although I like the idea of cougars in their historical range, I firmly believe that no federal or state protection should be given to any species that is above me in the food chain.
Just had to get that little "superior intelligence" gig in there, didn't you.
Just had to get that little "superior intelligence" gig in there, didn't you.
Actually it's just my camoflage...
"It's all Bush's fault."
Bush is from Texas. Texas is full of cowboys. Cowboys raise cattle. People eat the cattle instead of deer. Deer population explodes.
See? It is Bush's fault!
Food plots? Sections of land we've cleared and planted in various grains and other things to attract and feed wildlife. We used a mixture of wheat, oats, and clover. The clover is for the turkeys this spring.
"Take a drive past any Forest Preserve in the Chicago area and you will see the bottoms of tree branches clipped evenly at about six feet above the ground, And nothing, not even a small shrub, below the branches."
No doubt. But let me ask you this, is this forest preserve mostly mature forest? High and thick canopy with little sunlight hitting the ground? That's the problem we had and one of the reasons for logging, clear out the canopy and you'll have more undergrowth.
BTTT!!!!!!
I'm a foreigner and I'm not sure what US law allows but it's viable.
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