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E-mailDeer numbers still vague
Bob Frye covers the outdoors for the Tribune-Review. He can be reached via e-mail.
That became clear at a hearing of the House Game and Fisheries Committee held in Harrisburg on Thursday. Committee members heard presentations by the Pennsylvania Game Commission and Department of Conservation and Natural Resources regarding the direction of the state's deer management plan.
On several occasions, lawmakers tried to get the presenters to say exactly how many deer the state has and how many it can support. They would not.
That's not because the right number of deer for Pennsylvania is some sort of secret, said Jim Grace, director of DCNR's bureau of forestry. It's because no one knows what the right number of deer is.
Pennsylvania will have the right number of deer only when its forests can support deer and other wildlife and still sustain itself, he said. That's not the case now.
DCNR can only get regeneration of tree and shrub species -- at least those preferred as food by hungry deer -- when it erects fences around new timber cuts. That's true everywhere, Grace said, disputing comments by State Rep. Ed Staback, the Luzerne County Democrat who serves as minority chairman of the committee, that some areas of state forest are seeing regeneration.
What that means is that the deer population -- however big it is -- is still too large, and the current program of working to lower deer numbers must continue, Grace said.
"We've seen no evidence at all that this problem has been alleviated and that we should back off this program," Grace said.
Chris Rosenberry, newly appointed as head of the Game Commission's deer management section, did admit the agency probably overestimated the size of the deer herd when it put it at 1.6 million animals a few years ago. It's clear, too, that the size of the herd has decreased in recent years.
But the agency must continue to manage deer so that they're in balance with their habitat, said commission deputy executive director Mike Schmit. That's hard, he admitted, given that hunters' desire to see deer is often at odds with what's best for the deer themselves. But it must be done.
"If deer are important to us, so are healthy forests," Schmit said. "We can't insure healthy deer without healthy forests."
Grace and Cal DuBrock, director of the Game Commission's bureau of wildlife management, also warned that lawmakers and hunters should be wary of reading too much into the infrared deer counts being compiled on state forest land.
DCNR is paying an Idaho-based researcher $188,000 to fly over nearly 300,000 acres of state forest and count deer using forward-looking infrared technology. Preliminary results of that work are scheduled to be released at a press conference Tuesday.
The counts will provide another piece of the puzzle to help estimate deer populations, DuBrock said. He's "somewhat skeptical" that the counts will say once and for all just how many deer are out there, though.
More importantly, the counts will not show how many deer there should be, said Merlin Benner, DCNR's wildlife biologist. It may show, for example, that there are few deer in areas with poor regeneration, which would mean deer numbers there would have to go even lower for a period of time.
How long is that?
"I don't know that we know. I'll tell you when regeneration starts to come back," Grace said.
That's not what hunters are going to want to hear, said Elk County Democrat Rep. Dan Surra. The commission and DCNR have little credibility with hunters in his area, he said.
It's true Pennsylvania's forests, especially those north of Interstate 80, are in trouble habitat-wise, he said. But the agencies need to reach out to hunters and find a way to solve the habitat problem using them.
"If the answer ends up that we're going to need two deer per square mile to get regeneration, that's not going to work. We're going to lose hundreds of thousands of hunters," Surra said.
