Reducing deer herd helping habitat to recover


By Bob Frye
TRIBUNE-REVIEW OUTDOORS EDITOR
Sunday, February 26, 2006


Pennsylvania's forests have a story to tell, and it seems to be one of hope, though not yet of complete success.
Efforts to allow the state's woodland habitat to recover from decades of overbrowsing by whitetails -- largely by reducing the size of the state's deer herd over the last four years -- seem to have produced some good results. Foresters, biologists and land managers say they're seeing the kind of regeneration that's been missing from Penn's Woods for decades.

Scott Reitz, a wildlife biologist in Allegheny National Forest, said that as deer numbers have come down there -- and particularly in the Kinzua Quality Deer Cooperative, a 73,000-acre chunk of public and private land managed with hunters for habitat and healthy deer -- the woods have responded. Reitz said he's seeing oak and hemlock seedlings surviving outside of campgrounds for the first time in years.

"You couldn't find a hobblebush in this forest at any time in the last 75 years unless it was growing on top of a rock where the deer couldn't reach it," Reitz said. "I'm seeing hobblebush now."





All of that growth is providing habitat for ruffed grouse, songbirds and snowshoe hares, Reitz said. But deer are benefitting, too.

Statistics collected at voluntary check stations in the KQDC show that hunter-killed bucks weighed 114 pounds on average in 2002, when the deer density was estimated at 27.3 animals per square mile. In 2005, when the density was estimated at 14.4 deer per square mile, bucks averaged 127 pounds.

The typical buck four years ago had a rack with four points and a 10-inch spread. Last season, the average buck brought to the check stations had 7.2 points and an antler spread of almost 15 inches.

"That habitat is not yet where it needs to be, but we're getting there," said Dave deCalesta, a wildlife biologist and consultant who helps manage the KQDC project. "And as we do, those deer are going to get even bigger."

None of that should be taken to mean that Pennsylvania's forest habitat problems have been solved, though, deCalesta warned. As things stand now, just more than half of the forest plots monitored by volunteers on the KQDC still show no evidence of regeneration.

That's not something unique to the KQDC either. Will McWilliams is a researcher in the U.S. Forest Service's Forest Inventory and Analysis Unit in Newtown Square. For the past five years, he has overseen a project that involves examining 5,000 forest plots spread across every county in the state.

What that research has shown is that "regeneration is still pretty bad" even in areas with adequate sunlight, McWilliams said. Statewide, two out of every three plots are failing to regenerate in terms of desirable species like oak, black cherry, hickory, ash and walnut.

Even if you factor in the survivability of less desirable species like elm, aspen, black locust, and birch, about half of the plots are failing to regenerate, McWilliams said.

Not surprisingly, the big woods of northcentral Pennsylvania are the worst off. In wildlife management unit 2F, just 26 percent of plots are sustaining themselves even when those less desirable species are included in the mix.

"That means that 75 percent of the time, you would not get adequate regeneration even if you opened the canopy," McWilliams said. "That's pretty bad."

No one knows just how long it might take for those forests to rebound, even if deer numbers are kept at their current levels, but it's certainly "going to take more than one or two years," McWilliams said.

John Dzemyan, a land manager for the Pennsylvania Game Commission with responsibility for places like game lands 44 in Elk County, agreed. He said that the habitat in his area "is better than it's ever been in the last 50 years."

Still, he guessed that 80 percent of the forests in his area are struggling to sustain themselves. The new growth that has popped up can be measured in inches, too, meaning that if deer are allowed to come back up too quickly, they'll simply gobble up the progress of the last few years.

That's why Dzemyan would like to see Game Commissioners maintain deer numbers at their current levels for another few years. Drastically reducing the number of available doe licenses, going back to things like a three-day doe season, or eliminating DMAP on public property, as some legislators have suggested, would be mistakes, he said.

"That would kill the program," he said. "That would be devastating. That would lead us right back down the road of overbrowsing again.

"There are some real good things happening right now. Hunters just have to be patient."

"We have a real success story in the making," deCalesta said. "Here on the KQDC, we've got an example of sportsmen, landowners and the Game Commission working together in a partnership that's bringing back the habitat. We're trying to make the Game Commission aware of this. It's their regulations, the three-point antler restriction, the concurrent seasons, and DMAP, that have allowed us to do this.

"We've had success, and we expect more, but we can't do it if hunters aren't allowed to hold up their end of the bargain."



Ed Callahan does not know how many deer live in Forbes State Forest. He does believe, though, that the number was too high for the available habitat for too long.
The good news, said Callahan, supervisor of the Forbes, is that things may be improving, at least in places.

When foresters cut timber on the Braddock portion of Forbes State Forest -- the area below Uniontown in Fayette County -- this summer, they're going to hold off on fencing some of those cuts.

Typically, the bureau of forestry fences almost all of it cuts to keep deer out and allow regeneration to occur. Callahan suspects that deer numbers might be low enough in the Braddock portion of the forest for regeneration to occur without fencing, though.

"If the deer are at a lower level, we shouldn't see such a dramatic difference between what grows inside the fence and what grows outside it. That should be pretty telling," Callahan said.

Callahan isn't ready to stop fencing timber cuts on the Laurel Mountain and Mt. Davis portions of the Forbes just yet, but foresters will be doing pellet counts on the areas that were enrolled in the deer management assistance program last year to see just how many deer might be living there.

At the same time, researchers from Penn State University will be working in the Forbes and all of the state's other forest districts this summer to collect data on what is growing there. Merlin Benner, a wildlife biologist with the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, said those researchers are meeting now to determine things like which "indicator" species can best tell them how the forest responds to changes in deer densities in the future.

OK Kathi, I'll bite....

I really miss the days when you could go out in the PA big woods, plop down on any old stump and see dozens of 80-to-90-pound does and a handful of scrawny spike and 4-point bucks...

Now that all the skinny ones are gone, we actually have to scout new territory (sometimes hundreds of yards from our traditional cabin-festooned hunting area) and hunt the buggers! And the does are pushing 160, the bucks 225!

Antler restrictions are working, increased doe harvest is working --the only thing left to do IMO is clear cut much more aggressively the next few years....and shoot more bears and coyotes !!!

More Doe tags please!!!

AllanD