What Do Our Petitions Ask? Our petitions ask city and county governments to set up a community task force that will work with citizens and naturalists to study the deer situation, determine what a sustainable population level is, and establish a program to reach and maintain this sustainable level. Other than preventing people from feeding the deer in urban areas, our petitions do NOT suggest any particular form of control. There are many that are possible and there should be broad community input into any decision about which ones to use. Our petitions, in other words, merely allow concerned citizens to tell their elected officials that they perceive there to be a problem and to ask them to start the process of studying and remedying the situation in a democratic manner.
We hope that all concerned citizens will study the situation and join in the decision-making process through attendance at public meetings, letters and commentaries in the newspaper, letters and calls to elected officials, and other peaceful and respectful forms of democratic activity.
Why Is Control Necessary? The steadily increasing size of our uncontrolled deer population has resulted in damage to our biodiversity, animal habitat, and gardens needed for sustainability. The deer leave behind disease-bearing ticks and E-coli-laden droppings where our children and pets play. They cause damage to life and property through car and bicycle accidents as well as direct attacks on homes and persons during the rutting and birthing seasons.
How Did This Situation Develop? By 1900, hunting had eliminated white-tailed deer and their predators from Indiana. During the 20th century, deer but not their predators were reintroduced into the state.
Deer reproduce rapidly. As one study showed, if you have 6 deer now, you will have around 160 in six years. By 1990, the deer had become so numerous in our state parks that something had to be done. Here's a description of what the situation was like:
"In some of our state parks, deer ate so much vegetation that there was little left from 5 feet above the ground to ground level. In some parks, wildflowers and tree seedlings were things of the past. Deer were seen in these parks standing on their hind legs to reach food. At these locations, they were forced to eat mostly grass, which is less nutritious for them. In wooded areas, the ground was nearly bare except for stinging nettle, garlic mustard, paw paw, barberry and a few other plants deer found mostly inedible." (see http://www.in.gov/dnr/parklake/files/deer2.pdf).
The destruction of plant life -- including many native plants -- was destroying other species of animals because it eliminated their places to nest and their sources of food. We had eliminated the deer and now the deer were eliminating other types of animals and the plants they depend on. And the deer themselves were suffering as they found less and less to eat. An adult deer can eat up to 12 pounds of food per day, and needs at least 3 to survive.
State naturalists -- along with those from all over the eastern half of the US who faced similar problems -- responded to the problem by carrying out studies of how to control the deer population. They looked at:
1. Doing nothing
2. Trapping and transferring deer
3. Reintroducing predators
4. Supplemental feeding
5. Fencing deer in pens
6. Fertility control
7. Hunting
They eventually chose the last option as the most feasible one. You can find a good discussion of the pros and cons of various management techniques at: http://wildlifecontrol.info/pubs/Documents/Deer/Deer_management_mechs.pdf. Very briefly: Many deer die when they are trapped and moved, and other deer simply move into the area from which the others were removed. The public would not stand for the reintroduction of wolves or other predators and, even if they would, this might cause safety problems. (When Boulder, CO let it's deer population grow uncontrolled, mountain lions from surrounding areas came in to eat the deer and the good people of Boulder then faced two problems instead of one.) We could provide 3 pounds of food a day for thousands of deer, perhaps, but in a few years the number of animals will have grown so large that the cost would be enormous, and just the trodding of so many hooves, and the rubbing of so many antlers on trees, would be detrimental to vegetation. Fencing thousands of animals would essentially be turning them into zoo animals. Forms of fertility control that have been tried have been largely unsuccessful and very expensive, since it has to be done on an annual basis.
In 1993, Indiana started "deer reduction" hunting programs in state parks to cull animals and protect the plants and other types of animals. Even with this hunting, the ever-growing numbers of deer migrated into urban and suburban areas of the state, including in Monroe County and Bloomington. It hasn't helped that developers have been creating large, new housing developments farther and farther from the center of Bloomington, thus eliminating habitat for the deer. But even if we had strict "zero urban sprawl" laws that restrict expansion of human dwellings, the deer would, absent natural predators, double their population almost every year and all those new animals would need places to nest, water, and at least 3 pounds of food a day to just barely survive.
What Have Other Communities Done? Cities and counties in Indiana and several other states have taken action to reduce their deer populations to a safe level and maintain a sustainable density. There are several articles with detailed information about these efforts available for downloading at the right. Indiana now has nine Urban Deer Zones in which bow deer hunting is permitted under controlled conditions. Hunting, while the form of control most commonly chosen for a wide variety of reasons, is only one form of management, and hunting can be set up in various ways, according to the wishes of members of the community. But to repeat: our petition does not call for any specific form of control.
The Cost of Doing Nothing. The deer overpopulation is a man-made problem, but it will not go away by ignoring it. Without natural predators, a completely "natural" balance is impossible except if we agree just to allow the deer to starve and be run over. The cost of replanting vegetation and reintroducing species driven out by loss of habitat, of treating Lyme disease and people involved in car and bicycle accidents, of losing crops, of disposing of sick and starved deer, and of repairing damaged property will only grow with the inevitable increase in the deer population. Some habitat will not be able to be restored, and our environment will pay a high price for the decrease in its biodiversity.
Is This Just a Case of Selfish People Wanting to Protect Their Gardens? No. Many of us have created gardens that are wildlife habitats. We provide nesting places, water, food and safe winter spaces for many species. We also grow some of our own food so that we live in a way that does less harm to the earth. The deer come into these gardens and eat everything, including the shrubs and other plants other animals need for shelter, food and nesting. They kill young trees and damage others with their antlers.
If we build 8 ft fences to keep out the deer (and only the rich can afford this), it also keeps out other species of animals, depriving them of a safe place to live. The deer population has already grown so large that they are beginning to eat plants that are toxic to them. They are having such trouble finding good birthing spaces that there are reports of does attacking pets and people because their fawns are so close to homes.
While each homeowner may initially come to the conclusion that there is a problem and something needs to be done because of damage to their own property, you only have to bring up the subject wherever you go to learn that the problem is widespread and involves public as well as private lands. The Griffy Reservoir area, for example, has experienced a severe decrease in its biodiversity. Those of us who want to eat locally grown food were shocked to learn that one farm that lets you pick your own strawberries this year had its entire crop eaten by deer. Putting up barriers in our own yards merely shifts the problem to our neighbors and brings us closer to the day when the deer begin to starve on our doorsteps. We need a broad, community-wide solution.
How You Can Help - You can help by downloading the petitions, signing them and emailing us so we can come pick them up. You can also scan signed petitions and email them back to us. We will have a table at the Farmers' Market on most Saturdays, and petitions may be returned there too.
You can help even more by talking to friends and neighbors about this issue and encouraging them to get involved.
If you feel strongly enough about this issue to sit at the Farmers' Market on a few Saturdays during the summer and fall, please let us know which dates you’re available and we’ll contact you.
Thank you!
