The Conservation Commission has appointed a five-member Deer Management Subcommittee to study the subject of deer overpopulation in Harvard. As members of this subcommittee, our tasks are to investigate the abundance of deer on town land and the impact these deer have on the ecology of our forests, and to examine methods of deer population management.
We have held four public forums and hosted expert speakers and panelists, including David Stainbrook, the deer and moose project leader, and Dr. Robert Wernerehl, the state botanist, of the Massachusetts Division of Fisheries & Wildlife; Dr. Samuel Telford, a researcher and professor in the Department of Infectious Disease and Global Health at Tufts University; Michele Grzenda, the Conservation Administrator for the town of Weston; and the deer management program managers of four other Massachusetts towns.
We invite you to our final forum, which will feature Dr. Allen Rutberg, a researcher and professor in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at Tufts University. Dr. Rutberg will discuss his work using contraceptive vaccines to manage deer populations. Please join us at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, July 11, at Town Hall.
We will continue to study the issues described above, learn from these expert presentations, and listen to your questions, comments, and concerns. We plan to submit our recommendation to the Conservation Commission in August.
Please visit our page on the town website for further information. Our past forums are available on the town cable television website, harvardcabletv.com, under the search term “deer.” Please also feel free to communicate with us by email, via Harvard’s conservation agent, Liz Allard, at lallard@harvard.ma.us.
We are eager to hear your comments and answer your questions, and we hope to see you at the forum.
Robert Douglas, Paul Willard, Tom Cotton, Jason Cole, and Ben Urquhart
Deer Management Subcommittee members
