[End Times Sentinel]

Deer mainly live in the first 100-150 meters of forest edge, so you're right in that we're increasing their habitat, especially suburban tracts cut into the woods.  Deep forest few of us see, it's very dense with undergrowth and not easily navigable.

 

What destroys the forests though is the deer themselves in that they eat saplings and rut against younger trees (scratch the bark off them, which weakens them, opens disease vectors, and eventually kills them).  Next time your in the woods (almost certainly forest edge) take a look up.  You'll see what foresters call a "Cathedral" woodland.  All the trees are large 60-80 year old trees, and very, very few small to moderate trees.  As those older trees die off, there's no shorter trees to take their place.  Ideally, a healthy forest will have trees equally spread throughout levels of maturity.

 

Owl_Eagle

(If what I just wrote makes you sad or angry,

 it was probably sarcasm)

[bert]

I've been working for sevral years now on the reestablishment of the American Chestnut tree.

We plant seedlings and they are like deer magnets. They will be sheared off to the ground and other species adjacent are untouched.

I travel a great deal in East Tennessee, South West Virginia and Western North Carolina. I see many farms in the process of reverting to woodland. These are in all stages from pastures over grown with blackberrite, to cedar forests and the climax hard wood saplings. There is no old growth and climax is is wood lots that vary in age but are not old.

It is these woodlands that are growing large deer and turkey populations.

[IIntense]

"...suburban tracts cut into the woods."

While I know very well that human beings (at least most of us) rank above the lower animal species, we have displaced so many animals with our housing projects, for example. Then we freak out if we see them on OUR property. Do you know what I mean?

This may have nothing to do with the growth of the deer population, but they do cross busy highways to get from one "forest" area to another.

Killing them for the fun of it bothers me; I get no joy from killing anything, even a plant.

Oops. I confess. My position regarding insects is that they have no rights to live in my house. I will exterminate them, just as I will smack a mosquito dead when it lands on my skin.

Zapping a mosquito, a yellow jacket, or a wasp occurs without second thougts. Killing SOME insects causes momentary sorrow.