Invasive Deer Spread Ire
In England, desperate homeowners have turned to increasingly inventive methods for keeping the Reeves’ muntjac -- a barking, pig-shaped deer from China and Taiwan -- out of their rose beds. Harried Britons have displayed scarecrows, deployed ultra-sonic instruments, experimented with deterrent sprays, spread lion dung and gentlemen’s urine, and hung stockings stuffed with unwashed human hair in their gardens, all with limited success. (The Royal Horticultural Society suggests wrapping your roses in a 5-foot-tall fence and calling it a day.)
Since arriving in England circa 1900 (when a duke released the deer onto his estate), Muntiacus reevesi has completely colonized its new home. As many as 120 muntjacs live in a single square kilometer in parts of southeast England, and their preference for tender shoots and flowers makes them more than a garden-variety pest. They munch on ground-level thickets, threatening the nightingale’s habitat; they graze on honeysuckle, decimating the white admiral butterfly’s food supply; and muntjacs are responsible for an estimated quarter of Great Britain’s 74,000 annual deer-vehicle collisions, which cost more than 47 million dollars in total damages and sometimes, human lives. They’re the British Isles equivalent of the Midwest’s Asian carp crisis -- but on dry land.
In its native Asia -- the only other place that free-ranging Reeves’ muntjacs exist -- the species is threatened by disappearing habitat and industry. The deer are hunted for their meat and their hides, which are used in chamois manufacturing. In England, despite their hunger for rose bushes, they remain popular in some circles because, unlike native deer, muntjacs breed year-round, making them permissible to stalk in all seasons -- a boon for hunters.
Until recently, Ireland and Northern Ireland remained largely free of muntjacs, but they now seem to be establishing themselves there in the wild. An increase in sightings in 2009 and 2010 roused suspicions that shooting groups were introducing the deer deliberately -- and illegally. Invasive Species Ireland asks citizens to report sightings online, and its government backers have tasked Jaimie Dick, a lecturer in ecology at Queens University Belfast, with educating state environmental groups and the public about possible methods of controlling the threat. Management can be expensive, as can the crop damage, loss of biodiversity, garden destruction, and erosion due to disappearing ground cover muntjacs cause. "If we don’t get on top of it early," Dick says, "It could become a very, very big financial, economic, social problem in the future, as it has become in England. We have a chance in Ireland to make sure that doesn’t happen. We’re probably still able to eradicate them, but soon I think we’ll have lost that opportunity."
