Recommendations for 2024 Deer Management from the 2023 Final Report

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The results of the 2023 deer management program show that the populations of deer in South Mountain Reservation and Hilltop Reservation are greatly reduced since deer management activities were first undertaken in 2008. However, those populations, especially in the Hilltop Reservation, are still considerably higher than they should be.

Forest ecologists recommend a deer density no greater than 20 deer per square mile in a healthy forest ecosystem. In a forest that is damaged by overbrowsing by deer, as is certainly the case at South Mountain and Hilltop Reservations, the density should be reduced to 10 deer per square mile or lower in order for forest regeneration to succeed.

For South Mountain Reservation, the Deer Population Estimator calculates an overwintering population for 2023-24 of 134 deer (42 per square mile), which is 70 deer more than the recommended population of 64 deer (20/square mile x 3 .2 square miles) for this park, if this park had a healthy ecosystem. At the 10 deer/square mile density recommended for an impaired ecosystem, there is an excess of 102 deer.

Essex County has invested considerable resources to establish 41 fenced enclosures throughout South Mountain Reservation, in which native plantings have been installed to jumpstart the forest’s recovery from the impacts of deer. In theory, as the deer population is incrementally decreased in size by the deer management program, the native plantings will have an increasing chance ofrepopulating themselves as they spread their seed beyond the fenced enclosures.

Therefore, reduction of the deer population in South Mountain Reservation should be continued. It is recommended that hunting occur at 14 baited sites, over the course of 5 days, with a goal of removing 102 deer. Based on past experience, hunting should be limited to afternoon shifts only.

The drone-mounted infrared survey of South Mountain Reservation showed higher densities of deer in some sections of the park versus other. That data should be correlated with the actual yields from the various baited sites when selecting bait sites for 2024.

2017 Deer Management Program, Essex County, Final Report

 

 

Position Statements

 

July 2018

It is time for Essex County to get serious about its deer management efforts in our forested parks. In spite of 11 years of annual deer culling, crucial for reducing the overbrowsing of the understory by white-tailed deer and allowing the forest to regenerate, it has only been moderately successful.

Specifically, the program has never reduced the deer density in South Mountain Reservation below 20 per square mile, the maximum sustainable for a healthy forest. This is far above the 5 per square mile recommended by ecologists for rejuvenating impaired forests (a condition cited by the County’s own expert, Dan Bernier, as “certainly the case” last year). And, if we continue with this partial effort, SMR may lose the battle against the deer herd: the spotlight count this May, in which the Conservancy participated, found 26 percent more deer than in 2017 (53 vs. 42), indicating a density around 60 per square mile. In short, to save our forests, this crucial deer management program needs to be expanded and improved.

The Conservancy has several recommendations to make this program more effective and less costly:

  1. Increase the number of afternoons to at least seven in 2019 from five in 2018. The five days last year were clearly insufficient to reduce the deer herd.
  2. Schedule the hunting days so that there is only one day per week at each location (SMR and Hilltop and possibly the Mills Reservation). Doing this has been shown to make the program more effective in the last days, otherwise deer keep away at the end. Spacing helps.
  3. Close Brookside Drive and Cherry Lane on these single afternoons each week. This will decrease the significant overtime costs for sheriff patrols. (Watchung Reservation has had a similar deer management program longer than ours and does not use the police to close the park – they save money and have had no incidents.)
  4. Install lockable gates or posts with chains at Locust Grove, Crest Drive, the Bear Lane steps, Turtle Back and Mayapple picnic areas, and the Pine Grove bridge parking area and the Girl Scout oval off South Orange Avenue. This will allow these access points to be easily closed when culling takes place. The installation costs will be far less than having sheriffs parked over the next several years.

In July, the Essex County Parks Department will request a deer management permit from the state to continue deer culling in 2019. Write to Essex County Executive Joe DiVincenzo, Jr. at joedi@admin.essexcountynj.org to let him know of your support for the expansion and improvement of this needed program, one critical to save our damaged forests and the adjacent neighborhoods overrun by deer. Write him with the subject line: “Expand deer culling, reduce costs, save our forested parks.” He needs to know that the people against managing the deer herd are a clear minority.

If you are silent, it is not clear that the program as currently constituted will allow the forests of South Mountain and other reservations to survive in the coming decades. Do you care enough to act?

Dennis Percher
Chair, Board of Trustees
South Mountain Conservancy

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October 2012

Deer Culling in our Reservations:  A First Step toward Environmental Stewardship
Dennis Percher, Chair, Board of Trustees, South Mountain Conservancy
October 2012

On October 16th, the Essex County Freeholders approved the Parks Department’s request for a permit to cull white-tailed deer in two reservations early in 2013.  A vote on the actual program is forthcoming, but they and the County administration now – after five years and over a million dollars of investment–seem to be wavering and abdicating their responsibility for saving the forests.

The South Mountain and Hilltop Conservancies believe this program to reduce the excessive population of deer must be continued in all three forested reservations so their fragile ecology can be restored.  Our elected officials must stop waffling year after year and consciously embrace environmental stewardship.

Environmental stewardship is a concept championed more than 60 years ago by Aldo Leopold.  He recognized the negative impact man had had on the environment and that in the remaining natural areas the urgent need for individual responsibility and action, within economic constraints, “to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community.”  He wrote of an emerging “land ethic” to ensure its health through the “capacity of the land for self-renewal.”

More recently, in this year’s Hopewell Valley Community Stewardship Plan which is primarily concerned with the problem of over-abundant deer, Mackow and Van Clef write: “…proponents of stewardship proceed from the viewpoint that human activities directly and indirectly shape the remainder of our natural world and that there is an obligation to intervene to promote ecological health and avoid further losses to biodiversity.”

We have shaped our forests in many ways.  After clear cutting most of the South Mountain Reservation 150 years ago to feed the pulp mills, the parks fashioned in our suburban environment from the regrowth forests paid little attention to biotic communities, irreversibly fragmenting our remaining natural areas.  Second, we removed the predators – think cougars and bears – that kept deer populations in check.  Finally, we introduced a cornucopia of supplementary food in our backyards with especially lush plants in the early spring when the does give birth.

As a result of these actions, the deer population is now far out of balance.  Historically, before the arrival of Europeans, New Jersey had around 70,000 deer, an environmentally sustainable 8-11 per square mile, or one deer per 64 acres.   In the past several decades — after near extinction a century ago due to unregulated hunting — their numbers rebounded to reach over 200,000 in 1995.  Through deer management in the last several years, these numbers have been reduced to half that total count, but our reservations still average more than four times the recommended number to allow regeneration, for self-renewal.   Deer browsing continues to strip the forests of their ground-level understory, eradicating the saplings needed to replace aging trees.  Without this vegetation, the forest’s layered ecological system – a food chain starting with grasses and bushes, insects, and birds, and topped by small predators – has largely disappeared.  Culling over the last few years, we are happy to report, has allowed a few, scattered wild plants to emerge.  Most of the forest floor, however, still resembles a stark moonscape — if invasive thorn bushes or stilt grass have not taken hold.   And those few wild plants will disappear if we do not continue to act, to take our responsibilities as stewards seriously.

We must reduce this one dominant species, deer, so that an entire ecosystem can survive.  Unfortunately, in our large, open, unbounded tracts of land, non-lethal methods cannot work.  Connecticut’s Fairfield County Deer Management Alliance summarizing these methods states that: “no contraceptive vaccine for wildlife has been approved” by the FDA, research “attempts have failed on free-ranging herds” and “Even if birth control where available today, this method of deer herd management only stops the growth of the herd, it does not reduce the overpopulation that already exists.” 

Immuno-contraception (using a drug like the recently approved GonaCon) requires does being tracked down, tranquilized using high-powered dart guns (that require evacuating a park), followed until fully sedated, and then administered the dose by hand.  If this were not daunting, the same does need to be found again for booster shots in years 2, 5, and 8.  After all this, GonaCon is only 90 percent effective, so the unaffected deer — which average 1.75 fawns per birth — almost replace the herd.  Finally, the cost is around $1,000 per treated deer.   As for trapping and releasing deer, Fairfield’s website concludes that even if taxpayers were to pay up to $3,000 per animal, “there no longer remain suitable places for deer to be released.” In short, the only effective, safe, and economical method is the controlled hunting in place in our Reservations modeled after the program used for 15 years in Union’s Watchung Reservation.

To support this ongoing to culling, please sign our petition at www.Change.org, Tell Joe DiVincenzo: Continue Deer Culling in Essex County Reservations.  Search for deer culling.  The South Mountain and Hilltop Conservancy have garnered over 700 signatures – people with different e-mails.  We need 1,000 names to make it clear that Essex County residents cherish their reservations and take their responsibilities for stewardship seriously.  Take a minute. Tell your friends.  Send a message to save our forest ecosystem.

In our large reservations, the remaining natural spaces that account for nearly half of the County’s parkland, we need to re-establish balanced, complex ecological communities.  Our forests and future residents demand this of us.  Given the unnatural forces we have set in play, these lands will never reestablish this balance without our help.  We must intervene and reduce the number of deer each year:  without controlled hunting the population can double in three years putting at risk the reservations as we know them and the millions of dollars already spent on forest regeneration, deer management, and infrastructure.  Without being active stewards, all communities will lose.