PENNSYLVANIA NEWS: Legislative Proposals to Further Politicize Wildlife Management

In Pennsylvania, there are a few bills designed to replace science-based wildlife management with political management. Introduced by Rep. Deberah Kula, HB 870 would prevent the state from addressing wildlife damage on state lands. She also plans to introduce legislation to restrict doe hunting to a 3-day season. Meanwhile, Senator Rich Alloway is drafting a bill to boost deer population densities in the state's north-central region. Source: Lancaster Online

Forthcoming book of interest: DEERLAND

On April 2, 2013, Lyons Press will release DEERLAND: America’s Hunt for Ecological Balance and the Essence of Wildness.

The U.S. is now home to 30 million hungry deer—100 times more than were here a century ago. When we see all those deer out in the woods, most of us believe it’s a measure of the forest’s health. It is, but in exactly the opposite way we think. All across America, overabundant deer routinely devastate ecosystems and alter entire landscapes. DEERLAND traces the story of how we got here and asks tough questions about what it will take to restore the balance we’ve disrupted.

The author also asked tough questions about the rapidly changing gear, tactics, and values of today’s hunters—and about what role those hunters will continue to play in 21st Century America. And when it comes to deer, are hunters part of the solution, part of the problem, or both? Rest assured, however, that DEERLAND isn’t just about hunting. It’s a much larger environmental and cultural story. (To learn more, you can visit the author's website at www.alcambronne.com) Whether you’re a hunter, a gardener, or a birder, and whether you care about the environment, the deer in your back yard, or the shrubbery they just ate, DEERLAND is an eye-opening read that will change forever the way you think about deer and the landscape we share with them.

 Pre-order a copy at Amazon

PENNSYLVANIA NEWS: Legislature Considers Hindering Game Commission's Authority

The Pennsylvania state legislature is considering enacting a law (HB 2073) that would subject Pennsylvania Game Commission actions to the Independent Regulatory Review Commission.  More specifically, passage of this bill will remove the ability of the Game Commission to set scientifically and biologically sound seasons and bag limits for all wildlife. Decisions on deer season will be delayed if this passes, as is the intent. However, every other action or decision the Game Commission makes will also be delayed. Even decisions made between meetings to protect or preserve wildlife due to disease outbreak, land deals, and mineral and gas leases, as well as other actions and decisions authorized by current law and authority.

The bill seeks to require that all game commission rules and regulation go through the Independent Regulatory Review Commission. This process well known to take two years for actions to pass muster of the committee.

HB 2073 will impose an almost impossible bar to what is otherwise well managed agency tasked by the legislature to manage the wildlife in this state. That bar to proper management is borne with the intent to do exactly that: hinder, confound, and remove authority to the game commission in decision that are of the immediate or timely nature.

Source: PA state legislature 

MICHIGAN NEWS: Deer Excluded from Rare Forest

Deer are being fenced out of a Tenhave Woods, 15 acre nature reserve that protects one of only 10 known sites of wet-mesic flatwoods in Michigan. The Royal Oak Nature Society is erecting an 8 foot fence to protect the wildflowers in the reserve.

The deer’s’ days are numbered at Tenhave Woods.

Bye, bye Bambi.

When the white-tailed does, bucks and fawns head out for greener pastures in a couple months, the Royal Oak Nature Society will raise the fence around the wooded area behind Royal Oak High School to keep them out for good. The departure of the deer will bode well next spring for the thousands of wildflowers cut short during their blooming peaks this year.

Source: Daily Tribune

USA NEWS: More EHD Cases

Additional cases of Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease (EHD) are appearing throughout the U.S.  We now have reports from:

Wisconsin

Eric Lobner, a district wildlife supervisor for DNR, said the outbreak appears to be centered in Columbia County, but dead deer have also been reported in Waukesha, Walworth and Rock counties.

He said about 30 deer have been affected so far.

Source: Oshkosh Northwestern

New Jersey

EHD Type 2 Virus has been confirmed in Gloucester, Salem and Warren counties and test results are pending for samples from Cape May, Cumberland, Camden, Monmouth and Middlesex counties.

Source: Philly.com

  Pennsylvania

Dr. Walter Cottrell, Pennsylvania Game Commission wildlife veterinarian, today announced that epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD) has been confirmed as the cause of death for a deer in Westmoreland County. While the agency is waiting for results from samples collected from deer found dead in Allegheny, Greene and Westmoreland counties, Dr. Cottrell noted a sample from Cambria County was inconclusive.

Source: Sacramento Bee

Missouri

The Missouri Conservation Department says it has been getting reports of hundreds of dead deer around the state. The agency says the deer appear to have fallen victim to hemorrhagic disease, which is spread by the bites of the small midge fly. As of mid-September, the department had received reports of about 2,800 dead deer, with the disease being the suspected cause.

Source: Sacramento Bee

Ohio

The first documented case of EHD was three weeks ago at an Ashtabula County deer farm. The Animal Disease Diagnostic Laboratory confirmed that of 20 deer samples checked, 13 of the deer had EHD.

Source: Cleveland.com

MISSOURI NEWS: Referendum on Urban Hunt

Another community is using the petition process to halt urban deer management.

There will be no bowhunting for deer in Cape Girardeau this fall.
The ordinance that would have allowed deer hunting within the city limits is now officially suspended. Keep Cape Safe, a group opposed to urban deer hunting, collected nearly 4,000 signatures on a referendum petition, which was certified Friday by the Cape Girardeau city clerk.


The Cape Girardeau City Council passed the ordinance July 16, which would have allowed bowhunting for deer on tracts of at least three acres during four months in the fall. The council now has 30 days to repeal the ordinance or the issue will be placed before voters in a future election.

 Source: Semissurian

MINNESOTA NEWS: Duluth Cull Continues Quietly

Deer are still creating problems for residents in Duluth.  However, the magnitude of the problem has been dropping over the past seven years.

But Duluth would be far worse off if the city had not conducted a bow hunt for deer within city limits for the past seven years. So far, a total of 3,777 deer have been taken during those seven years, and about 84 percent of them were antlerless deer (either does or fawn bucks). Each fall in recent years, more than 300 hunters have paid their $25 fee and passed shooting proficiency tests to take part in the hunt.

There has not been a single accident to date, and it is getting easier to donate venison to local food banks.

Source: Duluth News Tribune

NEW JERSEY NEWS: Petition to Continue Deer Cull

I cannot think of a prior example of a community petitioning to continue a deer cull, but that is happening right now in Essex County.

After years of vocal efforts to block the deer hunts in several Essex County parks, this may come as a surprise: The volunteer groups that handle much of the conservation work at Verona’s Hilltop and the South Mountain Reservation are circulating a petition to not end the hunts.

Theresa Trapp, treasurer of the Hilltop Conservancy, and Dennis Percher, chairman of the South Mountain Conservancy, say that while the deer populations at both parks have been reduced, they are still “nowhere near” the 10 deer-per-square-mile density needed to allow the forests and their ecosystems to regenerate. “We believe that stopping the culling, even for a year, is extremely ill-advised,” the two said in a statement. “With no natural predators in our area (wolves, mountain lions, black bears), deer populations will continue to expand unless the County actively reduces the herds.”

For more information, see: myvernonanj

WISCONSIN NEWS: October CWD Hunt Scrapped by Governor

Wisconsin will give up trying to control a contagious disease affecting the state's deer population.

Gov. Scott Walker on Friday rejected state wildlife officials' request to run a four-day October antlerless deer hunt in the chronic wasting disease zone, saying he wants to streamline Wisconsin's hunting season structure.

Walker said he's abiding by a report Texas deer researcher James Kroll gave to the Department of Natural Resources in June. The governor hired Kroll to review the DNR's deer hunting regulations and strategies. Kroll noted hunters are unhappy with what they see as a complex web of multiple hunting seasons and questioned whether the October hunt generated enough kills in the CWD zone to continue.

Unless the epidemiology of CWD changes to become less contagious (it develops an R-sub zero of less than 1.0, as experts would say) we can expect the disease to spread throughout the state.

Source: Madison.com

RESEARCH NEWS: Another Recent Study Questions Deer-Lyme Link

A recent study has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, questioning the link between deer and Lyme disease. It is not the first study to do so, and in fact my view on the connections between deer and Lyme (such as they are) are a minority viewpoint within the field. Moreover, I do not conduct disease research, so my opinion should not be regarded as "expert opinion" on the topic.

Deer, predators, and the emergence of Lyme disease

Lyme disease is the most prevalent vector-borne disease in North America, and both the annual incidence and geographic range are increasing. The emergence of Lyme disease has been attributed to a century-long recovery of deer, an important reproductive host for adult ticks. However, a growing body of evidence suggests that Lyme disease risk may now be more dynamically linked to fluctuations in the abundance of small-mammal hosts that are thought to infect the majority of ticks. The continuing and rapid increase in Lyme disease over the past two decades, long after the recolonization of deer, suggests that other factors, including changes in the ecology of small-mammal hosts may be responsible for the continuing emergence of Lyme disease. We present a theoretical model that illustrates how reductions in small-mammal predators can sharply increase Lyme disease risk. We then show that increases in Lyme disease in the northeastern and midwestern United States over the past three decades are frequently uncorrelated with deer abundance and instead coincide with a range-wide decline of a key small-mammal predator, the red fox, likely due to expansion of coyote populations. Further, across four states we find poor spatial correlation between deer abundance and Lyme disease incidence, but coyote abundance and fox rarity effectively predict the spatial distribution of Lyme disease in New York. These results suggest that changes in predator communities may have cascading impacts that facilitate the emergence of zoonotic diseases, the vast majority of which rely on hosts that occupy low trophic levels.

Link to study here

MICHIGAN NEWS: EHD Confirmed

EHD is killing hundreds of deer in southern Michigan.

Officials in Michigan confirmed in early August that Epizootic Hemorrhagic Disease, or EHD, killed deer in two counties in the south central part of the state.

Deer deaths have also been reported in 11 counties in Indiana; officials there suspect the cause is EHD but are awaiting confirmation from laboratory tests.

For some historical context:

Michigan has observed EHD outbreaks each year since 2006. Before 2006, EHD was seen in Michigan in 1955 and ’74.

The estimated mortality has varied from 50 to 1,000 deer per year in the affected areas, according to Michigan officials.

Source: Post-Bulletin

INDIANA NEWS: Deer Cull, Opposition at Ogden Dunes

There are 55 deer in the one square mile town of Ogden Dunes.

The Town Council has voted 4-1 to seek a deer cull permit after the state Department of Natural Resources rejected steps such as trapping and moving deer and using insecticides to kill ticks on the deer.

Not all residents are on board.

Bernadette Slawinski, a 35-year resident and member of the task force, said she spent hours researching alternative methods of controlling both the deer and tick populations and gave her findings to the Town Council.

"I'm not sure they even read the report," Slawinski said.

She said there are simpler things residents can do, such as planting deer-tolerant plants and controlling the mice population, but officials and residents don't seem interested.

While Lyme is the main issue, traffic safety is a close second.

Source: Chicago Tribune

MISSOURI NEWS: A Referendum on Whether to Cull

Citizens of Cape Girardeau will get to vote on whether to conduct a municipal deer cull.

Opponents of a Cape Girardeau ordinance that established an urban deer hunting program say they have enough signatures to put the issue to a vote.

 The Southeast Missourian reports the organizer of Keep Cape Safe says more than 3,000 petition signatures are on hand and notarized. Only 2,446 signatures are needed to get a referendum on the ballot.

The hunt is scheduled to begin Sept. 15. Supporters say it is needed to cull a deer population that is causing traffic accidents and ruining landscaping inside the city.

Source: Sacramento Bee

USA NEWS: Dead Deer Roundup

The temperatures and drought have been extreme throughout most of the U.S. in 2012. Here is the August roundup of news.

Bluetongue (EHD) is killing deer in Kansas:

So far this year, KDWPT has received reports of dead or sick deer from at least 24 counties in northcentral and eastern Kansas. These counties include Jewell, Cloud, Cherokee, Shawnee, Clay, Washington, Wilson, Doniphan, Jackson, Miami, Franklin, Crawford, Labette, Linn, Douglas, Osage, Wabaunsee, Pottawatomie, Lyon, Riley, Anderson, Bourbon, Dickinson, and Marion. Most of these reports have involved a single sick or dead deer, with occasional reports of multiple mortalities.

Source: Infozine

 In Oklahoma, the cause has not been nailed down. But the leading contender is EHD.

Water samples from the Verdigris River tested negative for toxic blue-green algae, but the tests still don’t tell biologists what happened to the eight deer found dead in the river north of the Will Rogers Turnpike bridge this week. State biologist Craig Endicott, northeast regional supervisor with the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation, said samples collected by his department and by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Wednesday showed no toxic levels in test completed this week. Cause of the deaths still is unknown. Two suspected causes are blue-green algae poisoning or a common viral disease, epizootic hemorrhagic disease, known as bluetongue or EHD.

Source: TulsaWorld

And in Indiana:

Indiana wildlife biologists are investigating reports of sick deer to determine if they have an often fatal illness that's believed to be worse during drought years. The Department of Natural Resources says epizootic hemorrhagic disease, or EHD, is a viral disease transmitted by insects that typically occurs during late summer and early fall. Deer with EHD may appear depressed or feverish and seek comfort in or around water. Other signs can include blue-tinted tongue or eyes, tongue ulcers, sloughed hooves and an eroded dental pad. The DNR says the most intense outbreaks appear to be in Morgan and Putnam counties but suspected infections have been reported in nine other counties. Test results from a sample taken from one deer are expected back within two weeks.

Source: WISH TV

Iowa:

Iowa Department of Natural Resources officials are warning of a threat to the state’s deer population from insects that have thrived in the dry conditions. State officials are sorting through reports of more than 40 dead deer likely killed by epizootic hemorrhagic disease, or EHD.

Source: Des Moines Rgister

Arkansas:

Three deer, all females that apparently had weaned fawns recently, were found dead this week in Marion County.

Source: Baxter Bulletin

Lastly, there was this...oh, wait. That was Randy Travis.

Country singer Randy Travis was lying naked in the middle of the road with no car in sight when another driver spotted him and called 911, according to a recording released Thursday. "I just found a guy laying in the road," the caller said in a recording released by the Grayson County Sheriff's Office. He added later, "I want to say he had no shirt on, but I don't know." The 911 caller did not identify Travis by name and said he at first thought the body belonged to a deer.

Source: KOAA

SCOTLAND NEWS: Muntjac Deer Detected

Muntjac deer might be in the process of colonizing Scotland.

A shoot-on-sight call has been issued on so-called "Asbo Bambi" in Scotland, after reported sightings of the "destructive" species. Scotland does not have an established Muntjac population, but SNH estimates that if one were to develop it would cost the country around £2m a year. The deer, originally from China, cause extensive damage to vegetation and crops, and car accidents by running out into the road. The SNH's advisor on non-native species, Stan Whitaker, described the animals as "the most destructive pests in Britain".

Source: Sky News

IOWA NEWS: First CWD Case

Chronic wasting disease has been found in a white-tail deer on a hunting preserve in southern Iowa. Officials are calling this an isolated incident. The first ones always are. Iowa has been testing for about a decade now, and this is the first confirmed case.

Iowa has tested 42,557 wild deer and over 4,000 captive deer and elk as part of the surveillance program since 2002 when CWD was found in Wisconsin.

Source: Star Tribune

TEXAS NEWS: CWD Detected in Wild Deer

Samples from two mule deer recently taken in far West Texas have been confirmed positive for Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD). These are the first cases of CWD detected in Texas deer. Wildlife officials believe the event is currently isolated in a remote part of the state near the New Mexico border.

Source: cwd-info.org

WISCONSIN NEWS: Deer Czar's Report Released

The long-awaited report is out.  All I can say is, "Really?  Really?"

Okay, it is not all bad.  The idea of creating a centralized deer management assistance program is a good one.  But between the obsession with wolves (Wisconsin's 6th or 7th leading source of deer mortality), the contradictory recommendations (Do away with population goals, but develop metrics to monitor progress towards population goals?), the empty platitudes (put the fun back into hunting!), to the recommendations involving how things have been done for the past 17 years (the impacts of deer depredation on agricultural crops, forest regeneration and biodiversity, deer/vehicle collisions, the special significance of deer to the Ojibwe people and other factors also must be considered in management of Wisconsin’s white-tailed deer resources), it is hard not to be underwhelmed.

We'll see how long this shiny new object holds the attention of deer hunters in the state.

A link to the report is here.

NEW YORK NEWS: City Officials Launch "Deer Are Not Bambi" Campaign

The number of deer on Staten Island has gone from near zero in 2008 to 1500 today, just 4 years later.

As well as causing traffic accidents, they're wreaking havoc to residents' back yards and gardens. And they've prompted a community board to suggest the "Deer are not Bambi" campaign to dissuade people from feeding them. "The deer population has been growing like crazy on Staten Island," said Frank Morano, chair of CB3 which discussed the problem at a recent meeting. "People look at them as how cute they are and start feeding them, and the worst we can do is feed them. Let them live on their own."

Source: DNAinfo

MINNESOTA NEWS: Hunting Areas Becoming "Overbuilt" on Public Lands

The presence of tree stands for deer hunting on public lands is not a new phenomenon.  However, the size and extent of these tree stands is growing out of control.

First, let's look at a trend in tree stands:

It’s not just a couple of boards slapped into a tree, but tree houses with stairways, decks, shingled roofs, commercial windows, insulation, propane heaters, carpeting, lounge chairs, tables and “even some with generators so they have electricity,” Krepps said.

One deer “stand” discovered on county land was a cabin 18 feet wide and 20 feet long. And, increasingly, some hunters are buying elaborate manufactured stands and leaving them in the woods all year.

When a stand is abandoned, much of it is left to rot in the forest. But plastic, metal, shingles and other materials aren’t biodegradable “and really leave a mess in the woods,” said Jason Meyer, who manages forests in the southern half of St. Louis County.

It crosses the line on what is appropriate for public lands.  These stands often have locks on the door. 

Next, let's look at the evolution of shooting lanes.  This used to entail cutting some branches or the occasional sapling to provide an unobstructed (and thus safer) area for shooting.  And now?

Some of those shooting lanes are more than 30 feet wide and up to 700 feet long. In one area of county land near state land, it’s estimated that a group of hunters had cleared more than six acres of forest combined for their 47 shooting lanes. “They are taking public land out of timber production and it’s adding up across the county,” Kailanen said. “The real impact of this may not be realized until 40 or 50 or 60 years from now, when those trees would have been harvested.”

Without all of that tree cover, what is to be done? Why not plant food plots to entice the deer to be closer to the tree stand?

In some areas, hunters have taken to clearing the forestland and planting clover and other farm crops to attract deer. While the ethics of food plots is hotly debated in the hunting community — some say it’s akin to baiting deer, which is illegal in Minnesota — county foresters say the plots are taking even more forestland out of production. Moreover, the seeds planted may not be just one crop, but may bring in invasive, non-native species that could damage the native forest and spread.

This all adds up to a pseudo-privatization of wildlife.  It involves constructing buildings and landscaping on lands people do not privately own to manipulate deer that are not "theirs" for the sole purpose of increasing their chances of having a successful hunt.  This is contentious enough within the community of deer hunters.  It amounts to another self-inflicted black eye in society at large.

Source: Duluth Tribune