Are white-tailed deer eating our forests bare?

A month ago they sheared every last blue-green leaf off six of my hosta plants. Last week they picked all my green tomatoes–didn’t eat them, just picked them, punctured the skins with their square teeth, and then left them lying on the ground, discarded, next to my garden. As I bent over, picking up the remains of my Better Boys that morning, I noticed a single doe watching me from behind the boys’ slide just across the yard.

When my gaze met hers, I heard the faint rustle of a final straw. I hadn’t had my coffee yet, my tomatoes were trashed, and there was the culprit, watching me with wide, dark eyes. In that moment an animal that I’d always regarded as a precious woodland creature lost a little charm. I shouted at her, “Go away, get out of my garden,” and advanced with my arms waving in the air. She stood still until I’d traveled half the distance between us, then she turned and trotted halfheartedly away.

After a cup of coffee I could laugh at my deer encounter. Deer will be deer. Although I’ve had gardens for five years and never had a problem, there’s been a drought this summer. Everyone needs to eat, after all. And a treatment of deer spray (it helps to live with a professional wildlife manager!) should prevent them from feasting in my yard.

Then later that very same day I heard a story on the radio about deer populations and their effects on plant diversity, and I realized too many deer may be eating too much.

Twenty-one years ago scientists with the Smithsonians Conservation Biology Institute in Front Royal, Virginia, erected an eight-foot-tall fence around ten wooded acres to keep the deer out. The experiment created a world without deer and allowed the researchers to see exactly how the twenty million deer in America affect their habitat.

White-tailed deer are foragers, eating pretty much any plant they come across that tastes good. In almost all places where white-tailed deer live, their natural predators (wolves and panthers) were killed or pushed out a long time ago. Now the only thing keeping the deer population in check is people with hunting permits and wildlife managers culling them.

Killing deer–any animal for that matter–can be a sensitive issue. At my book club get-together this past weekend, one of my friends said they’re talking about culling the deer population in her neighborhood this year. She said the deer weren’t bothering her so it didn’t seem necessary. Having them around is part of living with nature, as far as she was concerned. Another friend said she didn’t think culling was necessary unless she could see real evidence that the deer were sick or starving because of overpopulation. These are arguments I’ve made in the past myself. Is it really necessary to kill more animals when really we should be learning to live with them, instead of against them? But based on what the Smithsonians Conservation Biology people are finding, it seems culling might be the way to go . . . and not just because I’m sick of them making a salad bar out of my shade garden.

In the researcher’s mini-world-without-deer, a diverse ecosystem of plant species is flourishing. With thirty or so species at different stages of growth, the researcher in the radio story compared it to a jungle. But outside the fence, all that’s green and growing are the few species that deer don’t like to eat and the trees that they can’t reach. Everything else ceases to exist–it’s been eaten.

So a world without deer is a world with a much greater variety of plant life, and probably a much greater variety of birds and pollinating insects and animals that diversity of plants tend to attract. As much as I dislike resorting to killing animals (even when I know it’s necessary and natural), the alternative is just as unpleasant.

Venison, anyone? And, seriously, what does this new research add to the debate about culling white-tailed deer populations as a wildlife management strategy?

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