NEW YORK NEWS: Village to Try Deer Contraception

Luckily the deer will not be asked to carry condoms or remember to take a pill at the same time every night, but if Hastings mayor Peter Swiderski's most recent plan to reduce the deer population goes forward, promiscuous does will soon be stymied in their efforts to take over the village.

Immunocontraception, a cutting-edge technology in the arena of animal control, was disclosed last night as the mayor's preferred approach to reducing the number of deer in Hastings.

Allen Rutberg, a professor at Tufts University, and leading researcher in the field of immunocontraception, said this method could potentially be effective on deer populations in suburban communities, but that it's still in the research phase.

"Introducing immunocontraception into a population of deer is complicated because it requires that the process be strongly supported by the community," Rutberg said, meaning that a long-term commitment to the program is necessary for success.

A 10-year employee of the Humane Society of America, Rutberg views immunocontraception as a middle-ground solution to a problem that generally offers no compromise.

"Whether to control a growing population of deer is generally a no-win issue," Rutberg said. "Some people feel strongly—and for different reasons—that deer should be killed and others believe strongly in protecting animal rights."

By hitting does with small vaccine darts, scientists are able to inject a naturally-occurring protein called Porcine (pig) Zonapellucida (PZP), which sterilizes the animals for what Rutberg believes to be about two years. This means animals would need to be re-vaccinated two years after the initial dose.

"The way it works is really cool," Rutberg said. "The PZP forms a protein envelope around female deer's eggs so that fertilization cannot occur. We use the pig Zonapellucida because other large mammals injected with pig protein develop antibodies that block fertilization sites on their own eggs as well."

Zonapellucida antibodies are nothing like any other protein in the deer's body, Rutberg said, so there is no risk of destroying other aspects of the animal's anatomy or temperament.

Another concern scientists have posed is whether if a human hunted and ate a deer—which is illegal though certainly not unheard of in Westchester—if she, too, could become infertile.

"There is absolutely no chance of that happening," Rutberg said. "The protein needs to be injected directly into the blood stream to work. Because it is extracted directly from a pig ovary it is probably no different from some of the ingredients in common dog food."

One shortcoming of Rutberg and his colleagues' studies thus far is that they have all been conducted in fairly contained areas, such as Fire Island and a federal campus in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

"Studies show that 90 percent of female deer don't wander very far throughout their lives," Rutberg said. "I imagine the efficacy rate would be similar for both contained and open populations."

But New York Department of Environmental Conservation spokeswoman Wendy Rosenbach is not convinced.

"This type of study is very hard to conduct in a wild population," Rosenbach said. "They can be hard to control and very expensive."

Swiderski disagrees with the expense of such action, saying each vaccine would cost no more than $30 and the village could probably apply for grants.

Though Rosenbach said the DEC would review an application for a permit to try immunocontraception, she thought it would be difficult to approve. "I don't believe we have issued a permit for this type of wildlife control," Rosenbach said. "If it were part of a study, that would be a different matter, and we would have to work closely with the scientist conducting the research."

But Rutberg is thrilled to be on the forefront of a non-lethal means of population control he truly believes will work.

"Though I no longer speak for the Humane Society, I can say with confidence a net-and-bolt cull is not something they condone," Rutberg said. "For us, immunocontraception was just a natural progression from our community outreach programs teaching the importance of spaying and neutering pets."

Now, the question is whether it will work.

Swiderski acknowledges the possibility that immunocontraception won't be the silver bullet--or dart--many hope it will, but said: "It's easier to turn back on a non-lethal approach that fails, shrug and say, 'We tried.'"

Source: Hastings-Dobbs Ferry Patch

NORTH CAROLINA NEWS: Will Contraceptives Stabilize Island Deer Population?

Ed. note: Birth control usually does not work for urban deer populations because they are not closed populations. Contraceptives could work on Bald Head if the island is isolated enough prevent immigration and emigration--it will be interesting to watch this situation develop.

BALD HEAD ISLAND (AP) — Officials on Bald Head Island are now working with university researchers to see if they can use contraceptives to limit the deer population there.

Village officials had been using a controlled hunt to cull the herd. That program reduced the number of deer from 500 to about 120 in five years.

The village has now decided to work with the University of North Carolina at Wilmington to test the contraceptive method, now that the herd is a manageable size.

Researchers tell the Wilmington Star-News they have started fitting deer with radio collars to see if the deer are staying on the island or migrating across the shoals to southern New Hanover County.

The research will cost the village more than $60,000 over two years.

Source:

http://www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080225/NRSTAFF/494129785

MYTHS AND FACTS ABOUT DEER MANAGEMENT

This comes to us from the Newtown Bee Newspaper (Connecticut). Nice job!

Increasing awareness of the overpopulation of deer in Connecticut has given rise to many misconceptions and "urban myths" about deer, their role in the spread of Lyme disease, and in the destruction of native woodlands. As a member community of the Fairfield County Municipal Deer Management Alliance, Newtown benefits from the expertise of its members and has hosted talks on the subject of Lyme disease and deer management through local organizations including the Rotary and Kevin's Community Center.

QUESTION: Isn't Lyme disease spread by white footed mice, not deer?

ANSWER: Lyme disease is caused by a bacterium that is carried by the deer tick. While it is true that the bacteria is introduced into the tick by the white footed mouse, it is the white-tailed deer that is responsible for the increasing number of deer ticks. Without deer the tick cannot reproduce as it requires a large blood meal from a white tail deer. The deer is the host of choice for the adult tick. Each deer can carry about 500 ticks. Each adult female tick can lay 3,000 eggs. Programs carried out in Maine and Connecticut show conclusively that when deer numbers are reduced sufficiently, Lyme disease is reduced dramatically. Other animals do not substitute for the deer. (Kilpatrick and LaBonte 2003)

QUESTION: Why don't we use contraception to control deer populations?

ANSWER: A $5 million experimental program funded by the New Jersey League of Municipalities has recently been dropped due to failure. The contraceptive tested, at a cost of $1,000 per doe, did not work. There is no contraceptive available.

For now and for the foreseeable future there is no tested contraceptive that actually works on wild deer. If and when it becomes available the drugs will only keep the herd from growing; they will not reduce the size of an existing herd.

QUESTION: Are there more deer-car accidents during the hunting season because hunters scare deer onto the roads?

ANSWER: No. Most deer-vehicle accidents happen after dark or before daybreak when there are no hunters out. There are more deer-vehicle accidents on Sundays (when there is no hunting at all) than Saturdays. Hunting season and the annual deer rut (mating season) coincide in late fall. During the rut, deer are energized by the mating instinct and often cross roads while pursuing does or being pursued by bucks. Also the shorter days during fall and winter mean that high traffic occurs at dawn and dusk when more deer are moving around.

No scientific data supports the claim that hunting activity increases the rate of deer-vehicle accidents. Instead, a review of data provided by the Department of Transportation supports the fact that vehicular traffic patterns influence deer vehicle accidents. Removing deer through hunting or other deer management techniques is an effective method to reduce deer populations, which will result in fewer deer-vehicle accidents.

QUESTION: If you start culling deer, is it true that the remaining deer will just start giving birth to more fawns than usual?

No, this only occurs if the deer population is so stressed by starvation that their birth rates are depressed prior to culling. Following a cull of the population, birth rates would return to normal causing population recovery. This does not apply in the case of our deer control programs since the deer populations are still healthy and increasing. Deer reproduction in our region remains a constant 1.77 fawns per doe per year according to deer biologists.

QUESTION: Which is more dangerous, hunting or Lyme disease?

ANSWER: Hunting is one of the safest outdoor activities. All hunters must pass many hours of safety instruction before they can obtain a license. There have been no nonhunter injuries in the history of controlled deer management hunts in Connecticut. There were more than 40,000 new cases of physician confirmed Lyme disease in Connecticut alone in 2002. There are also untold numbers of undiagnosed cases of Lyme that go on to develop serious cardiac, neurological, and arthritic complications. The number increases every year. There are also an average of 100 deer-vehicle accidents per town in Fairfield County each year adding to the dangers of excess deer.

QUESTION: Isn't the understory of the forest being destroyed by the canopy of mature trees and not by the deer?

ANSWER: No, the natural cycle of the forest is for mature trees to drop seeds to reseed the forest. This new growth is protected by the forest canopy from the drying sun during their early growth period. The deer, however, are selectively eating these young seedlings and wildflowers. We cannot blame this lack of understory on the "maturing forest" and "natural succession" as some would have us believe. According to forestry experts at Yale, these Fairfield County woods are not mature woodlands; they are intermediate in their development and would require at least another 50 years of growth to reach the stage of maturity that might cause loss of diversity due to dense shading of the forest floor. There is also evidence from forest and wildlife experts at the Connecticut Agriculture Experiment Station that deer are helping in the spread of invasive plants such as Japanese Barberry.

QUESTION: Is there any risk of reducing deer so low that they become endangered?

ANSWER: It is not the goal of Connecticut deer management programs to reduce the deer to critically low numbers. Further, it has become so difficult now to reduce deer numbers in Fairfield County because of lack of access to land and lack of local hunters that it may be hard to achieve adequate reduction of deer numbers, let alone go too far. Population reduction would obviously stop if numbers reached the ideal level of 10 to 12 deer per square mile. A maintenance plan would then be implemented that might include contraception if an effective one became available.

QUESTION: Why not just spray the yard for ticks or kill ticks on deer using the "4-poster device"?

ANSWER: The tick killing chemicals used are toxic to children, the environment, and water supply unless used very carefully. The 4-poster device (used to spread tick killing chemicals onto the heads of feeding deer) is at risk of spreading chronic wasting disease (CWD) through the deer herd by attracting groups of deer to feed at the corn feeder. CWD is a fatal slow virus disease similar to mad cow disease and has recently been shown (Science: October 6, 2006) to be spread through deer saliva, which is an obvious risk at communal feeding stations such as the 4-poster device. Furthermore, the deer are causing more problems than Lyme disease alone. Killing ticks will not stop destruction of the forest nor deer-vehicle accidents.

This information is provided as a service by the municipally appointed volunteer members of the 16-town Fairfield County Municipal Deer Management Alliance, which aims to promote regional approaches to the multiple problems of deer overpopulation. For more details on these topics, sources and graphs, and for more FAQs on deer management go to www.deeralliance.com.