The main cause is lack of predators. Their habitat has grown smaller and smaller, however, this same deforestation that has driven out the predator actually suits the deer better. Deer thrive at the edge of forests and roadways and newly planted lawns. Hunting or lack thereof has also become a problem here in eastern Massachusetts. Too many deer, so what? Well as stated above, the number of deer is truly more than the land can sustain. This damages the health of forestation and negatively affects other plants and animals in their efforts to survive as well.
Deer also feed on our crops and our landscaping causing a financial burden. In the meantime, many of the one-time farms in the eastern U. The ensuing rebound of white-tailed deer populations—over 20 million roam the U. Many animal advocates oppose such practices. In Defense of Animals IDA reports that even permitted sport hunting, under current wildlife management guidelines and outdated land management policies, contributes to deer overpopulation problems.
IDA and many other animal protection organizations believe that sport hunting should be banned and that deer populations should be allowed to regulate naturally. Already a subscriber? Sign in.
Thanks for reading Scientific American. Mature forests don't provide enough suitable deer food to support such populations. However, fully functional forest ecosystems don't exist in New York. Even deer in large wild areas such as the Adirondacks are not living in an intact ecosystem. Wolves and mountain lions, historically their principal predators, have been eliminated. Bears, bobcats and coyotes do prey on deer, particularly fawns, but hunting by humans is currently the primary predatory force acting to control population levels.
The exception is in urban and suburban areas, where the majority of deer deaths are caused by collisions with vehicles. Deer normally find the most to eat in edges, or transition zones between forest and more open habitat types, where there is an abundance of low woody and herbaceous vegetation.
The current pattern of human land use is ideal for creating and sustaining high-density deer populations. Open areas such as residential developments and agricultural fields are interspersed with forested areas, providing plentiful edge habitat as well as a variety of nutritious crops and ornamental plantings.
This supplements the natural food available to deer. Local laws and landowner opinions have severely constrained hunting in many developed areas. The resulting limited mortality combined with abundant food has allowed suburban and urban deer populations to reach extraordinarily high levels. Although better accessibility for hunters might have prevented such dramatic population growth, once populations reach high densities in developed areas it's very difficult to bring them down with recreational hunting in its traditional forms.
Nor would the return of the state's full suite of natural predators be expected to significantly reduce deer populations in developed or agricultural areas. Wolves and mountain lions would avoid or not be tolerated in such areas. The principal deer-related problems recognized by most people are those that directly affect human activities.
The most frequently mentioned concerns include:. Losses are not limited to property; although the federal highway fatality database link leaves DEC website doesn't separate the statistics by species, in the most recent year for which data are available people were killed in the U.
Many parts of New York are considered high-risk areas for human infection with Lyme disease, based on the density of infected ticks. Reducing deer populations to very low levels can reduce tick densities and infection rates because deer are the primary food source for adult female ticks. However, less drastic deer population reductions may not lower Lyme disease risk. Small mammals such as rodents and shrews, not deer, are the tick hosts that pass on the Lyme-causing bacteria.
Evidence from New York and other states suggests that densities of various predator species may be more important than deer densities as determinants of Lyme disease prevalence, through their impacts on small mammal abundance.
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