The Binghamton University administration is considering options to control the campus deer population that include culling, or selectively killing, the deer beginning this winter break.
The deer population on campus is far greater than the environment can handle, according to Julian Shepherd, an associate professor of biological sciences at BU and a member of the Committee of the University Environment (CUE), a group made up of faculty, staff and students that has been discussing this problem.
The University is looking into hiring a private company to conduct the culling. If this option is selected, the deer will be baited using food and then shot in the head by sharpshooters in trees to make death immediate. The deer meat will be donated to local food pantries, such as Binghamton CHOW.
James Van Voorst, vice president for administration, said BU was still in the early stages of working toward a decision on how to manage campus deer.
“We’re looking at action we can take which will reduce impact on our Nature Preserve and other areas of campus,” Van Voorst said. “We have identified the problem, but have not set up a course of action. We are moving in a very deliberate way; we don’t want to get ahead of ourselves.”
“We don’t hate the deer, we just love the forest a bit more than having all those deer around,” Shepherd said. “Right now there are 60 to 70 deer in areas that we want to cull. [This is] 10 to 20 times the population that can be sustained by the forest.”
He said that Dylan Horvath, BU’s steward of campus natural areas, and Michael Armstrong, adjunct assistant professor of biological sciences, have been taking censuses of the deer population for many years.
“[It’s] either the deer or the forest,” Shepherd said. “There has been almost zero re-growth, almost no … regeneration. 20 species of wild flowers have disappeared from the Nature Preserve, mostly because of deer. The deer have just cleared it all out.”
Shepherd said he believes that vegetation in the Nature Preserve will “grow old and disappear” if the deer culling does not take place.
“The prognosis would be that there would be no forest,” Shepherd said. “There’s practically nothing that deer won’t eat.”
Shepherd said the University’s goal is to reduce the deer population by 90 percent, down to about 10 deer total.
Lindsay Frankel, a junior majoring in English and a member of CUE, said she believed the goal was to reduce the deer population to about 15 to 20.
Shepherd said that safety risks to humans while culling took place would be prevented by making parts of the Nature Preserve off-limits to civilians, especially at night, when much of the culling would take place. Trained sharpshooters in trees would wait for deer to show up, attracted by food. The tree stands would be set up at least 500 feet away from any buildings or residences.
Shepherd said some students have taken issue with the proposal to begin killing deer to lower the campus population of the animals, and that they have proposed several options that would avoid killing deer, such as relocating or sterilizing the deer.
Shepherd said he and the other members of CUE “care very much about all life forms,” but that he believed these options would be too expensive and would not get the job done.
“We appreciate the deer very much, but the forest deserves to survive too,” Shepherd said. “Humans have mucked up the environment so much and we’re trying to redress the balance.”
Frankel said that in order to maintain the Nature Preserve, the culling is a necessary step.
“It is a necessary step to make the Nature Preserve what it is supposed to be,” Frankel said. “The damage done can be seen four feet high on most of the trees. [Plants] can’t re-grow because of all the damage the deer have done.”
Victoria Akins, a senior majoring in English, said she believes the University should not kill any deer.
“I think they should trap the deer and transport them to other environments instead of shooting them,” Akins said. “I’m against killing animals, all animals. We shouldn’t disrupt their habitat unless it’s absolutely necessary. Even if they decrease the population, they’re probably going to grow back again, so what’s the point? It’s not going to solve anything.”
Some students said they were on the fence about whether BU should cull the deer.
Jenna Fierstein, president of the Student Environmental Action Coalition, admitted that the population was out of control, but said she was frustrated that humans had created the problem.
“I am not happy about the fact that anything is going to be killed, especially when it is by humans, and the culling is necessitated by human activity,” said Fierstein, a senior double-majoring in biology and environmental studies. “However, I recognize that the deer population has gotten so large that few new trees and vegetation are able to grow to maturity, and so the ecological system is further hindered from restoring itself. Additionally, the deer are running out of habitat, due to the population size, and are endangering both themselves and humans, by running onto highways for example.”
Fierstein also said she wondered if other programs could be implemented in order to maintain the deer population.
“I think it is important to recognize, however, that the decision to cull deer does not imply that the deer are the problem,” Fierstein said. “On the contrary, the culling is essentially a temporary fix, a crutch, supplementary to the larger need for regulation of our own species. I hope that programs emphasizing this fact will be conducted in conjunction with the culling.”