By Timothy D. Schaeffer, PhD, Executive Director, Audubon Pennsylvania

Two state officials have demonstrated courage and leadership in standing up for the long-term interests of all wildlife and all Pennsylvanians. At the same time, two new reports suggest the ongoing challenges of managing white-tailed deer in a state in which a century of overabundant deer has left our forests in disrepair and unable to regenerate the very vegetation upon which deer and other wildlife rely.

In testimony before the House Game and Fisheries Committee last month, Carl Roe, Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Game Commission, showed resolve and commitment to fulfilling the commission's mission to conserve all birds and wildlife -- including game and nongame species -- by adhering to the seven-year-old attempt to bring deer into balance with their habitat. Roe stood up to angry legislators who were concerned about the number of deer the hunters in their districts reported seeing and said the commission has yet to achieve its deer management goals.

Audubon Pennsylvania applauds Roe and the commission for maintaining their focus on measuring and improving the habitats that deer and other wildlife need to survive, maintaining the health of the deer and reducing deer-human conflicts such as crop damage, car accidents and Lyme disease.

The week before Roe's testimony in Harrisburg, I was pleased to join Rep. Art Hershey (R-Chester) on a snowy morning in Chester County as he also took a stand for better deer management.

Rep. Hershey was there to announce the introduction of House Bill 550 (co-sponsored by Rep. Caltagirone-D-Berks), which would expand the tools available to farmers, landowners and communities who continue to struggle with negative deer issues. Nurseries like the one we visited that day are losing an average of $20,000 a year to deer damage while the surrounding communities struggle with Lyme disease and other problems.

Rep. Hershey's bill would also expand the availability of deer removal permits to include more communities and municipalities. This would be an important tool for suburban and urban communities struggling with managing deer in complex and difficult settings.

To those who would suggest there are no deer left in Pennsylvania, the evidence suggests otherwise.

The Department of Conservation and Natural Resources recently released a report on the impact of deer browsing on woody trees and shrubs in the state forest system and the ability of those species to regenerate. The report found 24 percent of study plots with desirable regeneration and 44 percent with no woody regeneration. According to the study, this "indicate[s] that browsing has not been down long enough for a widespread regeneration response."

Pennsylvania has global stewardship responsibility for a number of forest species. Seventeen percent of the worldwide population of scarlet tanagers nest in Pennsylvania, and nearly 10 percent of the world's wood thrushes nest here. DCNR's data on its own forests shows that the habitats upon which these birds depend have not been given a chance to recover after years of overbrowsing by deer.

Deer managers typically need to have hunters harvest at least 30 percent of the female deer to stabilize a population and more to reduce it. Preliminary results of a multiyear study by the Game Commission and the Pennsylvania Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit at Penn State University on female white-tailed deer survival would indicate that the deer many hunters claiming are not in the woods are really just avoiding those same hunters.

The study on over 250 deer in the big woods of north-central Pennsylvania and ridge and valley region of south-central Pennsylvania indicate that survival rates for the year exceed 80 percent. Among the deer in the study, hunters have failed to remove even 15 percent of the population.

This raises serious concern about whether hunters under the current program can manage the herd in these large forested tracts, which include important bird areas and some of the states most significant natural areas.

As a conservationist, I feel it is my responsibility to help maintain a natural balance between deer and the rest of our forest ecosystems. I derive a lot of personal satisfaction and feel closer to the land as a result of the time I spend deer hunting. As a hunter, I have experienced the need to adapt my hunting methods and work harder to find deer. Last year, I harvested three antlerless deer in as many counties in habitats ranging from suburbia to the big woods.

The current effort by the Game Commission to balance deer with their habitat has forced hunters to work harder to find deer, and the flora, fauna and people of Pennsylvania will be better for it. However, the state's own data suggest that we have a long way to go.

Timothy D. Schaeffer, PhD, is Executive Director of Audubon Pennsylvania, a state office of the National Audubon Society. He can be contacted at 717-213-6880 x20 or by sending email to: tschaeffer@audubon.org. More information on the deer management issue is available at the Managing White-Tailed Deer in Pennsylvania webpage.

Video Blog: Timothy Schaeffer’s Comments Before Agriculture Senate Committee

NewsClips: Deer Nibble State’s Forests at Alarming Rate

Potentially Ominous Deer News

Deer Gobbling Up Forests

State Says Deere Still Damaging Forests

Op-Ed: Too Many Deer

Forest Conditions Improving, But Still Need Work

Deer Taking a Bite Out of PA Forests New Growth

4/6/2007