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 ...
rhoddies,petunias, roses, Celosia, holly bushes, birch tree leaves....you name it...they will eat it....
my husband hunts, but not in this area....too many restrictions .....and houses on 5 acres....
we love watching the deer, love to see them laying down under the trees, summer or winter....peaceable kingdom and all that....
but they do destroy everything...even small trees that husband plants.....
some people can make several thousands of dollars doing what gives them pleasure...
maybe the states should start this.....pay people to kill cleanly excess deer...maybe just does for now...
ping
If I am not mistaken, most newspapers are written at a 6th grade reading level.
cougars---in No VA we're getting coyote
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