What is North America's most dangerous (non-human) mammal?
Grizzly bears? Certainly Lewis and Clark on their way to the Pacific Ocean in
1804 thought so. In the early 1800s, some 50,000 grizzlies roamed the western
United States, but their population has now dropped to around 1,000 in the
lower 48 states. Bears, grizzly and black, killed 128 people in North America
in the 20th century. What about mountain lions? Reports that mountain lions
lurk in the hills and pick off women trail bikers certainly chill the blood.
There have been 14 deaths in North America as a result of mountain lion attacks
in the 20th century.
No, there is another creature roaming America's woods that
is far more dangerous than these big predators. The most dangerous mammal in
North America is...Bambi. The U.S. Department of Transportation estimates that
white-tailed deer kill around 130 Americans each year simply by causing car
accidents. In 12012, these predator deer had a banner year, causing 396 human
deaths in car wrecks.
There are about 2.75 million deer/vehicle collisions
annually, resulting in 68,000 human injuries and more than $3 billion in
insurance claims in addition to the death toll. Deer also carry the ticks that
transmit Lyme disease to about 21,000 people each year. Economic damage to
agriculture, timber, and landscaping by deer totals more than $7.4 billion a
year.
The problem, as nearly any suburbanite in the eastern United
States knows, is that deer populations are exploding. Researchers estimate that
prior to the arrival of European settlers, white-tailed deer numbered between 27
and 41 million. By the early 1900s, deer populations had fallen to between
300,000 and 500,000 animals. This population crash was a result of market
hunting, that is, killing and selling the animals to butchers.
In 1900, the passage of the federal Lacey Act, (cited at: 16
United States Code, Subsecs. 3371-3378 [16 U.S.C. §§
3371–3378]), prohibiting interstate traffic in wild game taken in
violation of state law, effectively ended market hunting. At the same time,
states like Pennsylvania and Virginia established game commissions that
restocked deer and prohibited the hunting of does.
Before the arrival of settlers, predators like wolves, bears,
and Native American hunters, had kept deer populations in check.
After their nadir in 1900, deer populations began to
recover, rising to around 54 million animals today. State game commissions'
constituents are chiefly hunters. Since hunters want more deer, these agencies
have traditionally managed deer in order to maximize their numbers. This means
that until recently, hunters could kill bucks but not does. In some areas, the does
outnumber the bucks at around 30-to-1.
Deer overpopulation harms natural ecosystems. In high deer
density areas, deer browsing prevents the regeneration of forests as deer eat
nearly all the tree seedlings, destroy forest understory plants, and reduce
overall species richness.
Several studies found that deer browsing
significantly reduces songbird numbers by destroying their habitats.
So how to protect ourselves from this dangerous mammal? Some
more squeamish suburbanites, who generally hunt for their steaks and venison at
the local supermarket, suggest using contraception. And in urban settings,
contraception does work. "Shooting deer in urban parks and yards is
illegal, unwise, unsafe, and publicly unacceptable," said Mr. Jay
Kirkpatrick, director of Zoo Montana's Science and Conservation Biology Program. Mr. Kirkpatrick has developed a vaccine using
porcine zona pellucida proteins (pig proteins that surround pig eggs) that
prompts a deer's immune system to produce antibodies that block egg
fertilization. To be effective the vaccine must be injected, usually via dart
guns, into deer four to five times over several years, which is a physically
impossible task, given the extended deer population today.
The vaccine has successfully reduced the number of deer on
Fire Island in New York by 50 % over a 7 year period in the early 1990’s, and
by 40 % at the National Institute of Standards and Technology campus in
Gaithersburg, Maryland, over the a 5 year period. Mr. Kirkpatrick notes with dismay that state
game commission bureaucrats refuse to use contraception on state-controlled
urban lands because their hunter constituents fear that animal rights activists
will try to require its use on free-ranging forest deer populations. Mr. Kirkpatrick
further notes that his center makes only 4,000 to 5,000 doses of the vaccine
annually and that contraceptive vaccination is totally inappropriate for
controlling deer populations on wildlands.
Hunters traditionally want to kill bucks with big sets of
antlers.
In the past century, state game managers have persuaded
hunters to leave does alone to reproduce. However, an innovative program called
Quality Hunting Ecology advocated by Mr. Brent Haglund, the president of the Sand County Foundation [www.sandcountyfoundation.net/] in Wisconsin, has
been adopted by some states. The idea is that hunters must kill two does before
they can shoot a buck.
This program would reduce the number of fertile females. One
apparent side effect of having fewer female deer is that testosterone levels
rise in bucks that must compete for access to the remaining females, thus
making them bigger trophy animals. Preliminary results of the Quality Hunting
Ecology program in Wisconsin show that it does reduce the deer population and
improve forest quality. Pennsylvania has also adopted a similar program, and
other States are researching the idea.
However, Donald Leal, who is a senior associate at the Political Economy Research Center [http://www.perc.org/], in Bozeman, Montana
(an environmental think tank), has advocated an even more radical solution to
the problem of deer overpopulation: a return to market hunting.
Mr. Leal points out that the chief reason there is a deer
problem is that hunters want to maximize their benefits, in this case, the
number of deer available for them to shoot. So game commissions have adopted
regulations that do that.
It must be noted that Mr. Leal is not advocating a return to
the open commons that prevailed in the 19th century, which led to the steep
decline in deer populations. But Mr. Leal does think that a system modeled on
individual tradable quotas (used to manage some fisheries) would help keep deer
populations healthy and in check.
Right now, it is illegal for hunters to sell their excess
game to anyone. This prohibition leads to absurdities like the fact that nearly
all the venison served in America's finest restaurants is imported. Mr. Leal suggests that state game commissions
could determine acceptable herd sizes and then sell quotas to hunt to
individual hunters, outfitters, and restaurant cooperatives for the excess. And
Mr. Leal points out that his home state, Montana, already sells licenses to
hunt bull elk to non-residents for around $1,000.
The political obstacle to re-establishing market hunting by
creating a game quota system is that hunters would fiercely oppose it. They
don't really want reduced deer herds. But perhaps city dwellers and
suburbanites, tired of ramming deer with their vehicles and watching their
landscaping be turned into deer pellets, will one day, be able to outvote the
hunter lobby and restore market incentives to managing wildlife. Then Bambi
will no longer kill so many people or cause so much damage to our National and
State Forests. - Bird
