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Understanding the purpose of the deer management program

by Jessie Panek  ·   Friday, November 1, 2024

An article in last week’s paper provided many details about the Conservation Commission’s Deer Management Program, but it was missing a clear explanation of why we have this program.

Human behaviors have enabled the rapid growth of the deer population, which has disrupted the overall ecology of our land, particularly in our forests. Deer are a nuisance to many homeowners, farmers, and gardeners, but for the Conservation Commission it is the overall ecosystem of our natural areas that is our concern. The land cannot support a deer population as large as 20 to 35 deer per square mile, which is the Mass. Division of Fisheries and Wildlife’s estimate for our region. Ecologists see 10 to18 deer per square mile as sustainable. Above that, deer eat plants faster than they can regrow, and wild plants become fewer and fewer.

Deer are a particular concern for forest regeneration, because they can browse all the tree seedlings in a forest so new trees never get a chance to grow. Young trees are essential as more extreme and frequent storms and invasive insects are taking a greater toll than ever on our larger trees. The diversity and quantity of native plants in our forests is already being diminished, crowded out by invasives like bittersweet, burning bush, barberry, and multiflora rose. Unfortunately, deer prefer to eat native species, allowing invasives to spread even faster.

Plants are the basis of the entire food chain on Earth. Native plants provide food for our insects (most of which are not able to eat nonnative species like the invasives) and other herbivores, which in turn feed everything else including birds and most mammals. If we do not protect our native plants from the overpopulation of deer and other threats, the effects on the balance of nature will be devastating. We may still have “open space,” but there will be little nature left to conserve on our conservation land. The Conservation Commission’s Deer Management Program is to help conserve the nature of Harvard.

Jessie Panek
Conservation Commission, liaison to the Deer Management Subcommittee

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