New Year’s Day, 9:15 AM. 10.5 degrees, wind W, calm. The channel is calm, with no lake smoke rising. The sky is overcast but the barometer predicts sunny skies.
We know that the goal of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has been for some time the significant reduction of the state deer herd. They have been eminently successful in doing so, particularly in the northern, forested part of the state. What might the rationale be for this goal? There are several, some obvious some perhaps not so obvious.
A good reason to keep deer numbers in check has been the threat of chronic wasting disease, a problem in the southern counties of the state. One theory in the spread of the disease is that overcrowding and sharing of food sources spreads the disease, and caution would dictate that even if the proof of those factors is not incontrovertible that populations should be controlled through specific policies in the south. But that does not translate into herd reduction for that reason in the less-dense herd counties of the north. Rather, the stated (often not very loudly by the agency) case for herd reduction in the north is the impact of deer browsing on forest seedling reproduction. This is both an economic and an ecologic argument, as browsing of tree seedlings has an economic impact on forest timber and pulp wood production, and there are potentially huge amounts of money involved. Fewer deer equals more wood equals more dollars. The ecologic aspects are several at least, in that over browsing reduces the diversity of species in the forest and may thereby affect forest health, and severe over browsing can cause erosion and effect soil and water quality. I have not heard the DNR make much of a case for ecological degradation at present. That pretty much leaves forest products profits as the basis for herd reduction, but that argument ignores the fact that deer hunting, and deer viewing by tourists, also has an enormous economic impact on the state economy, and deer hunting licenses and fees are a big part of DNR revenue. In order to understand policy, the economics and politics of the money trail needs to be sorted out.
There is another, almost cryptic, issue which may affect environmental policies, and that is the role of the environmental lobby, much of which is anti-hunting and truly believes that people should not be part of the “balance of nature.” Such attitudes impact predator reintroduction and control, as in the case of wolves, bears and other large carnivores. It is as though we have gone from societal wolf phobia, “the only good wolf is a dead wolf,” to “there is no such thing as a bad wolf.”
There is a general misconception that nature, left to its own devices, is perpetually “in balance,” and although that may be true in the long run, the balance is very crude, with great population swings of predator and prey species, and the overabundances of some species followed by population crashes and scarcities, or extinctions of others. The havoc of nature in the raw usually results in human intervention, imperfect as it ma y be.
So, where does all this leave hunters and other interested parties, and the deer herd, and the DNR? First, it leaves hunters and others frustrated and probably very angry and ready to take it out on the DNR and its management practices. It leaves the deer herd obviously very depleted, and possibly in danger of a crash if the trend continues (twenty percent decline followed by a thirty percent decline followed by…). It leaves the DNR with a very bad public relations situation at best and a hunter revolt at worst.
What can and should be done about the situation? Obviously the DNR needs to review its statistical analysis of deer and predator populations, because they don’t seem to have many of the numbers right, and without reasonably accurate population estimates rational policies cannot be set (go to the DNR web site and ferret out their statistical data and see if you have much faith in it). Predator-prey relationships need to be analyzed realistically without “nature knows best” politically correct attitudes. Hunting pressure needs to be reduced, particularly on does, with fewer special seasons and probably a buck only season until population numbers stabilize. Deer baiting should probably be discontinued, as it seems to upset the natural movement of browsing deer. Finally, the DNR and the state legislature should remind themselves that hunters vote.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
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