Gardiner Joe Williamson says sterilization does nothing to solve the immediate problem of too many deer. (Photo courtesy of Adam Allington)
Whitetail deer have adapted pretty well to the suburbs. But… it means a lot of car-deer accidents. It also means deer munching on tulips and shrubs. Some people consider them pests and want to get rid of the deer. But instead of simply killing them, one city has decided to capture and sterilize a number of does.
Adam Allington reports, the results might point toward the future of urban wildlife management.
Transcript
Whitetail deer have adapted pretty well to the suburbs.
But… it means a lot of car-deer accidents. It also means deer munching on tulips and shrubs. Some people consider them pests and want to get rid of the deer.
But instead of simply killing them, one city has decided to capture and sterilize a number of does.
Adam Allington reports, the results might point toward the future of urban wildlife management.
It’s a crisp night in Town and Country, Missouri…home to some 10,000 souls…and about 800 deer.
“There goes a deer over there, it’s just to the left of the tree, you can barely see it.”
Joel Porath is a wildlife regional supervisor for the Missouri Department of Conservation. Just like humans, whitetails he says, are right at home in the quiet cul du sacs of suburbia.
“They have all the food resources, they don’t have hunting and they don’t really have predators, so mainly vehicles are what kill them in communities like this.”
Lynn Wright sits on Town and Country’s board of aldermen. Despite the accidents she says most folks like seeing the deer around…kind of reminding them that they don’t live in the city.
“But when you start going from 2 or 3 and seeing 10 or 12 in the backyard you do start getting concerned about that.”
The car accidents were a problem, but Wright says people also complained about damaged trees and landscaping. Still, the town resisted the easiest solution—to just hire sharpshooters to come in and kill all the deer.
Instead, they explored alternative methods…this is sound from a department of conservation video…it shows four deer eating corn in a back yard…just then, a large dropnet is released…sending them into a flailing frenzy until technicians rush in with tranquilizer shots.
The deer are then brought to Steve Timm. Timm is a veterinarian with White Buffalo Incorporated. Its a company that specializes in sterilizing deer.
“We’ve got two does coming in. We’re going to sterilize them by removing ovaries.”
Timm operates out of a small eight by sixteen foot trailer… When the does arrive they’re hoisted on to an operating table and prepped for surgery.
“I’ve located the left ovary here, and so I’ll clamp it, bring it to the surface, use cautery to prevent any bleeding.”
The whole process takes about 20 minutes. The deer are then stapled up, fitted with reflective collars and released.
Timm says the theory is simple—fewer fauns mean less deer eating shrubs and running into cars.
“The early information suggests, that if there are some deer in the environment, especially our sterile does, the other deer have less tendency to move in.”
But not everyone backs the sterilization approach.
Joe Williamson is a retiree who loves to garden. Walking around his yard he points out flowering magnolias, yews, Japanese maples…basically, a kind of all-night deer buffet.
“This is a good example of antler rubs, this is called Staghorn Sumac. The bucks rub their antlers on here and they break them off, you see all these…its just wrecked.”
Williamson says sterilization does nothing to solve the immediate problem of too many deer. It’s also much more expensive. Town and Country paid White Buffalo 150-thousand dollars to sterilize 112 does, and kill another 100.
But, Joel Porath of the Department of Conservation says in the end, the best solution may involve sterilizing some deer…and killing others.
“Could you imagine if we stopped allowing deer hunting in the state? You know we kill around 300,000 dear each year and it doesn’t take very long for the population to jump back up. So, they do need to continue to do something in Town and Country down the road.”
By the end of spring Porath says the department should have enough information to see if sterilization makes sense for other suburban areas.
For The Environment Report, I’m Adam Allington.