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Task force recommends shooting deer
By LARRY KLINE - IR Staff Writer - 03/30/07
Helena’s Urban Wildlife Task Force has recommended officials use sharpshooters in most areas of the city to kill 334 deer next winter. If the city waits even a year, the group’s report said, more than 600 deer will have to be culled in order to attain an acceptable population of urban deer.
The task force’s report said the city now could be home to as many as 500 mule deer, with most living in Helena’s southern neighborhoods. Group members called the estimate conservative. If left unchecked, the population could grow to more than 1,800 by 2010, the report said. The group wants to reduce the herd to about 380 animals.
“Given the situation we’re in, (sharpshooting) is probably the most effective, it’s probably the safest, and while this may sound strange … it’s the most humane,” Task Force Co-Chair Matt Cohn said. “This is going to be the best method to achieve the goal we have.”
The group also recommended the city commission set aside between $30,000 and $100,000 for a deer-management program and appoint a permanent wildlife advisory committee to oversee the program into the future.
Task force members are set to present their report to city commissioners on Wednesday.
The report represents the end of one phase and the beginning of another. City commissioners will hold public meetings and discuss the issue. If they settle on a management plan, they’ll have to submit it to the state Fish, Wildlife and Parks Commission for final approval.
City Commissioner Sandy Oitzinger served on the task force, which reached its decision through consensus votes. She said she’s unsure how she’ll address the deer issue at the commission level.
“How I will vote on this as a commissioner is going to depend on the interaction and dialogue with the commission … it would be premature for me to say whether I’m going to support the sharpshooting option or not at this time,” Oitzinger said.
Whether the city and FWP will share the cost of deer management is unknown at this point. (See related story).
Group members evaluated management options on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood basis, broken down by Helena Citizens Council district. Sharpshooting is recommended for most of the city, excluding Districts 2 and 6 — the downtown and midtown areas of Helena.
The task force recommended several other options — including ongoing public education and encouraging the use of deer repellants and deer-proof landscaping. The group approved other options, such as fertility controls and certified urban hunting, which members said could become more viable in the future.
“There are some things that we’ve approved, but they’re on the backburner,” group member Bob Habeck said. “We wanted to recommend the slate of appropriate management options, even though they might not come into play in one year.”
Task force members rejected two options: doing nothing, or trapping deer and moving them elsewhere.
The group said allowing the deer herd to continue to grow unchecked will only exacerbate the problem, and the trap-and-transport option, while popular at public meetings held early this year, has a number of associated issues — it’s time-consuming and expensive, it potentially shifts the problem elsewhere and deer often die during the process.
The full report will be available on the city’s Web site, at the Lewis and Clark Library and at the city Parks and Recreation Department after it’s presented to city commissioners.
The herd
Helena is unique from the scores of other communities across the country that have adopted deer-management plans — the Queen City is home to mule deer, while the vast majority of other cities dealing with burgeoning herds are home to whitetails.
“The task force is plowing new ground when it comes to mule deer, because there are virtually no mule deer plans — they are all for whitetail deer,” said FWP Biologist Gayle Joslin, who served on the task force.
The group believes more than 32 deer occupy every square mile in Helena, and population projections put the herd’s total at more than 700 animals by next winter. The group settled on a goal of 25 deer per square mile, a number some other communities have used for whitetail deer, Joslin said.
Whitetail and mule deer behave differently, she said. Whitetails live in densely forested areas or along waterways and try to evade predators.
“Mule deer don’t necessarily work that way at all,” Joslin said. “They are animals of the open landscape.
“Mule deer will evaluate their circumstances visually,” which is why they’ll often stand and stare at people, rather than running away, she added. “And in closer settings, mule deer will take on their predators. They will turn and beat coyotes.”
This behavior could spell a potential for conflicts between humans and mule deer that’s higher than the chances with whitetail deer, Joslin said
In a biological sense, Helena — with its watered lawn and gardens and city limits expanding more and more into wildlife habitat — could feed many more deer. The trick is finding how many deer Helenans are willing to live with, and task force members said total elimination is not an option.
Joslin said 25 per square mile might not be the right number, but it’s a place to start.
Is there a problem?
One of the basic questions task force members considered throughout the process — and an issue they heard again and again from the public — is whether an urban deer problem exists in Helena.
The group’s answer: Yes. And it’s only going to get worse.
“The (human) population that we see is going to grow, and the deer population is going to grow,” Task Force Co-Chair Virginia Niccolucci said. “We would have nothing other than more human-deer conflicts, unless we do something now.”
Habeck agreed.
“Using professional judgment and conservative estimates … we’re on the footslope of (an exponential) growth in urban deer population,” he said.
If city and FWP commissioners can’t agree on a plan for even one year, the problem grows, he said.
“The key thing to know is, even in a best-case scenario, we’re going to be losing time and … it’s just going to get worse,” Habeck said.
Co-Chair Cohn said the problem began to show itself a few years ago.
“Something started happening three years ago in our community,” he said. “Some balance changed. Our goal is to get back to that balance.”
In 2003, the Police Department received 103 complaints about deer, most of them calls about dead animals. The department received 16 reports of deer-vehicle collisions. Last year, dispatchers fielded 241 calls, with 30 reported collisions.
FWP received 73 calls in 2004 and 162 calls last year.
Oitzinger said the information she’s seen has convinced her Helena has a growing problem.
“What I think I’m beginning to see is that the population has grown to an extent that even if the deer aren’t being aggressive, there’s enough of them that … there’s a public-safety risk,” she said. “The do-nothing option would be very problematic.”
Read more in Saturday’s IR.
who pays for it?
Whether Helena city commissioners decide to hire sharpshooters or choose a different way to manage the Queen City’s growing deer herd, it’s going to cost money. And a question remains: Who will pay?
City officials say they want the state Fish, Wildlife and Parks Department to chip in, with Commissioner Sandy Oitzinger — who was a member of the Urban Wildlife Task Force — saying she wants at least a 50/50 split.
“I do believe they should be sharing some of the cost,” Oitzinger said.
FWP spokesman Ron Aasheim, noting the department has contributed a $7,000 grant to conduct a telephone survey and has donated the extensive time and effort of a wildlife biologist, said FWP will “wait and see what the plan is.”
“We haven’t been approached yet,” Aasheim said. “We obviously will be partners … but it’s an issue with many opinions.”
City Manager Tim Burton said he’d like to see some sort of cost-share agreement, but said commissioners need to discuss the specifics. He noted game populations in Montana, through good stewardship by FWP and hunters, have rebounded in the last century.
“When you look at that and the fact that there is an impact on urban areas, and FWP is charged with managing the state’s resource … then I think there’s an obligation for Fish, Wildlife and Parks to assist with both their technical expertise and financial resources to manage wildlife in urban areas,” Burton said.
“I think that a partnership is in order,” he added. “(FWP has) certainly been helpful in this whole Urban Wildlife Task Force effort.”
Larry Kline can be reached at 447-4075 or [email protected].
