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We have been conducting a study with deer exclosures in areas of our Piedmont state parks for the past several years. In general results indicate that deer are suppressing both natives and non-natives, especially multiflora rose in our study sites. Basically deer will eat anything and everything until nothing is left. Some of our northern suburban parks had upwards of 175 to 200 deer per sq. mile estimated from seven years of spotlight data we collected indicating the depth of our problem…and it could get worse if we are not successful.
We do not have any sites where we are controlling invasives and not controlling deer. We have one site with a very low deer population that is not hunted, but it is not a priority on limited resources at this time. Got a grant suggestion for such a study?
Editorial comments: We will all fail in ecological restoration efforts if we do not control deer. The idea that some invasives should be kept around for deer browse only comes from deer managers managing their seasons for hunters and non-hunters alike under modern conditions. It is all they know. They see deer eating Japanese honeysuckle and so it must be a good thing. After all, some places there isn’t a whole lot else to eat.
Modern deer management (which is really more people management) has become what wildlife biologists term “socially sustainable deer management” which basically means that their telephones are not ringing off the hook with complaints from hunters, homeowners, car insurance industry, Lyme disease victims and anti-hunters. It has more to do with policy than biology.
Deer have the ability to browse and graze hundreds of different species of plants. They adapt their food habits to the season. In drought years it may vary considerably from wet years, agricultural areas will differ from suburban areas. They ‘taste test’ food for nutritional value and regularly search out the most nutritious available food at the time. For example, most of the year they avoid tulip trees, but in the fall they love the yellow leaves right when they fall to the ground. Hunters take advantage of constant search for nutrition with food plots, a potential technique available to land managers to help kill more deer in some locations where food availability has been depressed and/or degraded (most of the eastern half of the US with the exception of agricultural zones). Yet food plots themselves could become a potential threat for introducing new as yet unknown invasive herbs to the woods. Check out the plant mixes in these things.
Recent studies of deer consuming & moving bush honeysuckle fruit reminded me of past restoration efforts I completed in Florida where raccoons were moving invasive fruit all over our restoration sites planting new generations of invasives, but when the sites began to recover, raccoons switched their diets to the once again available native fruits and began helping to restore sites instead of degrade them.
Even if we get some of our parks deer populations under control, and control invasives too (both monstrous challenges) it will take decades for many sites to recover after 25 - 50 years of deer over-population. And we need to get our wildlife agencies on board with these efforts. Of course the third leg of this stool is reintroducing fire as an ecological component in oak woodlands… we need all three.
Rob Line
Environmental
Stewardship Program
Delaware Division of Parks and Recreation
Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control
89 Kings
Highway, Dover DE 19901
(302)739-9220 office; (302)388-4485 cellular
-----Original Message-----
From: naturalareasassociation@yahoogroups.com
[mailto:naturalareasassociation@yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of Marc Imlay
Sent: Monday, November 13, 2006
5:37 PM
To:
naturalareasassociation@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [naturalareasassociation]
Interaction of non-native invasive plant removal and deer control
For the annual conference
of the Mid-Atlantic Exotic Pest Plant Council at
on the interaction of
non-native invasive plant removal and deer control. With
the extirpation of the
cougar and wolf predators at most sites and limited
predation by coyotes, it
is essential to have managed hunts to reduce deer to
10-20 per square mile. I
am soliciting research findings specifically for areas
where invasive plants are
being removed and deer are not being controlled. It
has been suggested by
deer managers that certain species of non-native invasive
plants, such as Japanese
honeysuckle that deer eat, and other non-native invasive
plants that deer avoid
such as Japanese Stiltgrass, should only be partially
controlled so the deer
can not find, or so that the deer avoid
the native plants.
Are there any actual research findings available on the effect on native plants
of partial control of specific species of invasive plants, as opposed to no
control or complete control in areas where deer densities are documented to
be, say, 30 per square mile or greater? Deer density is often measured in
various ways such as by noting the presence or absence of greenbrier leaves
at the browse level as well as by aerial photography. Is there a threshold
level of deer density below which invasive plant managers do not have to
be concerned with deer
issues? Cheers
Marc Imlay, PhD
Conservation biologist,
Anacostia Watershed Society
(301-699-6204,
301-283-0808 301-442-5657 cell)
Board member of the
Mid-Atlantic Exotic Pest Plant Council,
Hui o Laka at
Vice president of the
Maryland Native Plant Society,
Chair of the Biodiversity
and Habitat Stewardship Committee
for the
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