Deer management is the practice and philosophy of wildlife management employed to regulate the population of deer in an area. The purpose of deer management is to regulate the population's size, reduce negative effects of population on the ecosystem, and maintain the integrity of other populations. Due to economic activity of hunting (coming from fees and licenses), deer management can be an important contributor for state and government revenue.
As a deer population grows it will begin to reach the carrying capacity of an ecosystem, causing issues for other plants and wildlife. Plant life can begin to disappear locally because of browsing. [1] These local disappearances directly affect the population of that plant species and indirectly affect other wildlife populations that also depend on the plant species for food. [1] [2] This ultimately lowers the biodiversity and changes the composition of the habitat, region, or area until the population of deer is lowered and the location is given time to recover. [1] [2] In many cases, habitats are unable to recover from deer overpopulation on their own because deer extirpate a variety of native species from the area. Once these organisms are lost from an area, they typically do not return without human intervention, meaning that forests that have reached ideal deer population levels may still lack most of their biodiversity. When deer browse an area and remove native plants, exotic and invasive species tend to take over the forest floor, further hindering a forests health and ability to recover from previous deer overpopulation. [3]
Deer populations may reach the carrying capacity, leading to an increase in human and deer interactions. [1] These interactions can result in car accidents, crop damage, property damage, Lyme disease transmission, and much more. [1] These species interaction occur both in rural and urban areas where population of deer come into contact.
Each area comes with its own set of challenges as to which management practice is the most appropriate and effective. These challenges have led to the development of alternative methods of deer management. In suburban area, sharpshooting is used. [1] Other locations may use methods like hunting, birth control, or repellents to manage the deer population.
Deer population may be negatively impacted by infectious disease in the population, such as chronic wasting disease. Chronic wasting disease is present in 25 states in the United States, three Canadian provinces, Finland, Norway, and South Korea. Chronic wasting disease was first discovered in white-tailed deer and elk in 1978. Chronic wasting disease has no cure and is 100% fatal to deer. [4] [5]
The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS or FWS) is a bureau under the Department of the Interior that runs national programs for the public to learn about natural resources like fish and wildlife. The USFWS advise the conservation, management and advancement of the wildlife and fish in the United States as well as assists in international conservation efforts. [6] The United States Fish and Wildlife Service deals with the enforcement of federal wildlife laws, [7] protects endangered species and conservation and restoration wildlife habitat such as wetlands. [6] [8]
There are various methods that can be employed to have deer management and they can be broken down into two main types: lethal and nonlethal. These methods are used to regulate the population of deer in a specific area. If a deer population remains high for long periods, an ecosystem can suffer long term damage, forestry practices become more restricted and overall biodiversity can decline. [2] Areas with an abnormally high deer population density often have a variety of native plants extirpated (adding to the loss of biodiversity), and replaced with competing, invasive species. [3]
Deer hunting is a practice employed to regulate the population of deer. Hunting is a form of predation in which the deer are a food source or a trophy. Deer hunting is conducted in seasons that are regulated by government agency with tag limits for both bucks and does. Deer hunting can be conducted using a bow and arrow, rifle, muzzle loader or other approved weapons. [9] Hunting is only an effective method of population control when antlerless deer are targeted. The hunting of bucks has little impact on the population overtime because one buck is able to breed numerous does. Currently, hunting targeting antlerless deer is considered the most effective form of population control. [10]
If an area is being heavily affected by deer, repellents can be used to keep them away or minimize the damage. Deer repellent can produce a bad smell, burn the tongue, and taste bad. [11] The repellents can be natural or artificial but both use chemicals to deter the deer from causing damage. Repellents benefit gardens and orchids the most. [12]
Fencing forms a physical barrier, preventing the deer from entering an area. Deer fences can range from 3 ft. to 10 ft. tall. [12] There numerous types of fences used to prevent deer from causing damage, some types are electrical or high tensile. [13] The amount of time and type of management will typically determine the type of fence that is required for optimal deer damage prevention. [12]
Another way to control the population of deer is to regulate the birth rate. Decreasing the birth will limit the growth rate of the herd. Birth control vaccines have been invented that will prevent doe from having fawns for up to 3 years. [14] These vaccines can be administered by dart or by a shot. This type of management would be an alternative to hunting and most effective in urban areas where hunting may pose an issue. [14]
Hunting is the human practice of seeking, pursuing, capturing, and killing wildlife or feral animals. The most common reasons for humans to hunt are to obtain the animal's body for meat and useful animal products, for recreation/taxidermy, although it may also be done for resourceful reasons such as removing predators dangerous to humans or domestic animals, to eliminate pests and nuisance animals that damage crops/livestock/poultry or spread diseases, for trade/tourism, or for ecological conservation against overpopulation and invasive species.
Chronic wasting disease (CWD), sometimes called zombie deer disease, is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy (TSE) affecting deer. TSEs are a family of diseases thought to be caused by misfolded proteins called prions and include similar diseases such as BSE in cattle, Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) in humans, and scrapie in sheep. Natural infection causing CWD affects members of the deer family. In the United States, CWD affects mule deer, white-tailed deer, red deer, sika deer, elk, bison, squirrels, antelope, caribou, and moose. The transmission of CWD to other species such as squirrel monkeys and humanized mice has been observed in experimental settings.
The National Wildlife Refuge System (NWRS) is a system of protected areas of the United States managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), an agency within the Department of the Interior. The National Wildlife Refuge System is the system of public lands and waters set aside to conserve America's fish, wildlife, and plants. Since President Theodore Roosevelt designated Florida's Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge as the first wildlife refuge in 1903, the system has grown to over 568 national wildlife refuges and 38 wetland management districts encompassing about 859,000,000 acres (3,476,200 km2).
The white-tailed deer, also known commonly as the whitetail and the Virginia deer, is a medium-sized species of deer native to North America, Central America, and South America as far south as Peru and Bolivia, where it predominately inhabits high mountain terrains of the Andes. It has also been introduced to New Zealand, all the Greater Antilles in the Caribbean, and some countries in Europe, such as the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Romania and Serbia. In the Americas, it is the most widely distributed wild ungulate.
The sambar is a large deer native to the Indian subcontinent, South China and Southeast Asia that is listed as a vulnerable species on the IUCN Red List since 2008. Populations have declined substantially due to severe hunting, local insurgency, and industrial exploitation of habitat.
The Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge is a 145,188-acre (587.55 km2) wildlife sanctuary is located west of Boynton Beach, in Palm Beach County, Florida. It is also known as Water Conservation Area 1 (WCA-1). It includes the most northern remnant of the historic Everglades wetland ecosystem.
Wildlife conservation refers to the practice of protecting wild species and their habitats in order to maintain healthy wildlife species or populations and to restore, protect or enhance natural ecosystems. Major threats to wildlife include habitat destruction, degradation, fragmentation, overexploitation, poaching, pollution, climate change, and the illegal wildlife trade. The IUCN estimates that 42,100 species of the ones assessed are at risk for extinction. Expanding to all existing species, a 2019 UN report on biodiversity put this estimate even higher at a million species. It is also being acknowledged that an increasing number of ecosystems on Earth containing endangered species are disappearing. To address these issues, there have been both national and international governmental efforts to preserve Earth's wildlife. Prominent conservation agreements include the 1973 Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the 1992 Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). There are also numerous nongovernmental organizations (NGO's) dedicated to conservation such as the Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Fund, and Conservation International.
Wildlife management is the management process influencing interactions among and between wildlife, its habitats and people to achieve predefined impacts. It attempts to balance the needs of wildlife with the needs of people using the best available science. Wildlife management can include wildlife conservation, gamekeeping and pest control. Wildlife management draws on disciplines such as mathematics, chemistry, biology, ecology, climatology and geography to gain the best results.
Culling is the process of segregating organisms from a group according to desired or undesired characteristics. In animal breeding, it is removing or segregating animals from a breeding stock based on a specific trait. This is done to exaggerate desirable characteristics, or to remove undesirable characteristics by altering the genetic makeup of the population. For livestock and wildlife, culling often refers to killing removed animals based on their characteristics, such as their sex or species membership, or as a means of preventing infectious disease transmission.
The Mazama pocket gopher is a smooth-toothed pocket gopher restricted to the Pacific Northwest. The herbivorous species ranges from coastal Washington, through Oregon, and into north-central California. Four subspecies of the Mazama Pocket Gopher are classified as threatened under the Endangered Species Act of 1973, including T. m. pugetensis, T. m. tumuli , T. m. glacialis, and T. m. yelmensis. The Mazama Pocket Gopher is one of the smallest of 35 species in the pocket gopher family.
An animal repellent consists of any object or method made with the intention of keeping animals away from personal items as well as food, plants or yourself. Plants and other living organisms naturally possess a special ability to emit chemicals known as semiochemicals as a way to defend themselves from predators. Humans purposely make use of some of those and create a way to repel animals through various forms of protection.
Animal trapping, or simply trapping or ginning, is the use of a device to remotely catch and often kill an animal. Animals may be trapped for a variety of purposes, including for meat, fur, sport hunting, pest control, and wildlife management.
The elk, or wapiti, is the second largest species within the deer family, Cervidae, and one of the largest terrestrial mammals in its native range of North America and Central and East Asia. The word "elk" originally referred to the European variety of the moose, Alces alces, but was transferred to Cervus canadensis by North American colonists.
Deer hunting is hunting deer for meat and sport, and, formerly, for producing buckskin hides, an activity which dates back tens of thousands of years. Venison, the name for deer meat, is a nutritious and natural food source of animal protein that can be obtained through deer hunting. There are many different types of deer around the world that are hunted for their meat. For sport, often hunters try to kill deer with the largest and most antlers to score them using inches. There are two different categories of antlers. They are typical and nontypical. They measure tine length, beam length, and beam mass by each tine. They will add all these measurements up to get a score. This score is the score without deductions. Deductions occur when the opposite tine is not the same length as it is opposite. That score is the deducted score.
Nuisance wildlife management is the selective removal of problem individuals or populations of specific species of wildlife. Other terms for the field include wildlife damage management, wildlife control, and animal damage control. Some wild animal species may get used to human presence, causing property damage or risking the transfer of diseases (zoonoses) to humans or pets. Many wildlife species coexist with humans very successfully, such as commensal rodents which have become more or less dependent on humans.
The wildlife of Cambodia is very diverse with at least 162 mammal species, 600 bird species, 176 reptile species, 900 freshwater fish species, 670 invertebrate species, and more than 3000 plant species. A single protected area, Keo Seima Wildlife Sanctuary, is known to support more than 950 total species, including 75 species that are listed as globally threatened on the IUCN Red List. An unknown amount of species remains to be described by science, especially the insect group of butterflies and moths, collectively known as lepidopterans.
The Maryland Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is a government agency in the state of Maryland charged with maintaining natural resources including state parks, public lands, state forests, state waterways, wildlife, and recreation areas. Its headquarters are in Annapolis.
Human–wildlife conflict (HWC) refers to the negative interactions between humans and wild animals, with undesirable consequences both for people and their resources on the one hand, and wildlife and their habitats on the other. HWC, caused by competition for natural resources between human and wildlife, influences human food security and the well-being of both humans and other animals. In many regions, the number of these conflicts has increased in recent decades as a result of human population growth and the transformation of land use.
Overpopulation or overabundance is a phenomenon in which a species' population becomes larger than the carrying capacity of its environment. This may be caused by increased birth rates, lowered mortality rates, reduced predation or large scale migration, leading to an overabundant species and other animals in the ecosystem competing for food, space, and resources. The animals in an overpopulated area may then be forced to migrate to areas not typically inhabited, or die off without access to necessary resources.
In biology, overabundant species refers to an excessive number of individuals and occurs when the normal population density has been exceeded. Increase in animal populations is influenced by a variety of factors, some of which include habitat destruction or augmentation by human activity, the introduction of invasive species and the reintroduction of threatened species to protected reserves.