Deer vs. Nature

The biggest problem with the woods is the deer.  After being almost exterminated decades ago, white-tailed deer have rebounded in southern NY and in New England in general.  Every once in a while, some ambitious coyote will stalk a fawn, but the adults never feel anxious about the scrawny canines.  Their predators, wolves and pumas, have been gone for centuries, and aren't going to be back anytime soon.  The deer population has been exploding without bounds, simultaneously ravaging saplings and other native undergrowth, while benefiting invasive monocultures of garlic mustard, Japanese barberry and the Chinese tree of heaven.  Unless the deer are controlled, preferably by hunting, they will fundamentally damage the native biodiversity of local ecosystems.

In Westchester, a county of New York City suburbs, hunting is prohibited.  Many naïve "advocates of nature" think hunting is unnatural, or that it is cruel.  Well, get over it: hunting is a primal and necessary force of nature, and nature is cruel.  Since the apex predators are gone, we have to do their job instead.  And, for the safety of children and hikers, we don't have to let any yahoo with a gun go shooting in the woods behind someone's backyard; instead, why don't we let professional sharpshooters do the job?  This might cost a bit of money, but Westchester County has been spending lots of money already preserving land just to let the ecosystems be pillaged by raiding deer, and its time to fight back.  Unless we allow a natural deer cull, undergrowth plant species, saplings, the birds that nest in them, and ultimately the forests themselves will be in jeopardy.

There is a small woodlot, about five acres, in the Westchester town of Ardsley that it is overrun with these rats of the forest (deer).   The forest floor is carpeted with a thick overgrown lawn of garlic mustard, a European invasive-except for in a small swampy section.   A few deer resistant natives hold on to the forested hillsides--ferns, jack in the pulpits, Virginia creeper--but they are on the brink of disappearance.  A sunny field is overgrown with the Chinese tree of heaven, and clusters of Japanese barberry, a thorny shrub, are beginning to take hold in a few areas.  What do all these invasive have in common?  The deer don't eat them.  When their competitors are browsed close to annihilation by hordes of deer, they take advantage of the weakness, and out compete them.  The natives never stood a chance. Native plants have a hard time battling invasive plants normally, but with the deers' cooperation, the odds are grievously stacked against them.

On the other hand, there is another nearby wooded area, the Greenburg Nature Center, which is devoid of deer.  Invasives aren't absent from the Nature Center; however, they don't dominate the habitat or form dense monocultures.  Instead, they compete and coexist with natives more evenly.  Garlic mustard stalks mingle among wildflowers, grasses, other indistinct native underbrush, and a scattering of Japanese barberry bushes.  In a sunny former orchard, there are a few trees of heaven, but they do not have the upper hand against the maples, oaks, and cherries.  This ecosystem is not perfect, but it is relatively harmonious.  Without the ‘deer factor,' many native plants are able to successfully compete against invasives in southern New York.

What will happen if we decide not to control the deer population?  As many people can already see, the undergrowth will go first, the bushes, wildflowers and saplings.  Animals that depended on those plants, like certain birds, will disappear.  Over the long term, the destruction of saplings will end the regeneration of the forest, and as the trees fall, none will replace them.  Instead, we will be left with a brushy invasive tangle that would offer good shelter for deer, but not many other animals.   By then, the local ecosystem, the temperate forest, would become extinct, along with countless animals and plants that depended on it.

So let's cull a few deer.  It's unpopular, but it is essential.  Or else, we will let an ecosystem that took hundreds of millions of years to evolve be razed to the ground in less than twenty years.  And that would really be cruel.