animal overpopulation cause and solution

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http://www.emagazine.com/earth-talk/deer-overpopulation
Deer Overpopulation
Dear EarthTalk: Our community is talking of culling local deer herd numbers. Frankly I think it’s the people who are overpopulated, crowding out every last inch of habitat. What happens when we finally do develop everything? Pow! There goes the last doe?
—Anne Williamson, State College, PA
It’s hard to believe that deer, those innocuous enough vegetarian browsers that occasionally tromp through our backyards, are considered the scourge of many a suburban neighborhood across the continent. Prior to white settlement of the “New World,” tens of millions of deer blanketed the continent, but their population density was kept in check by free-roaming natural predators such as bears, wolves and mountain lions.
The white man’s rifle took out the deer’s chief predators and did a number on deer populations as well; venison was a staple meat on the ever expanding frontier. Biologists estimate that there were only a half million white-tailed deer left in the U.S. in the early 1900s due to unregulated hunting. At that point many states jumped in and began to regulate hunting to try to conserve fast dwindling resources. The new rules set limits on when hunters could kill deer and banned hunting females altogether.
In the meantime, many of the one-time farms in the eastern U.S. began reverting back to forests, creating a habitat patchwork that in some areas was ideal for deer. The ensuing rebound of white-tailed deer populations—over 20 million roam the U.S. today—is viewed as one of the nation’s greatest conservation success stories, especially since it occurred long before the dawn of the modern environmental movement.
But there is a dark side to all this “success.” Too many deer can cause problems for humans, other wildlife, and even for the deer themselves, who must compete for dwindling forage sources. “Complaints from residents are often that the deer are eating things that they have planted,” reports the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC). “Well fertilized and watered landscapes and gardens can be much more desirable to the deer than surrounding common ground areas that are likely not watered or fertilized.”
Other concerns beyond tearing up suburban backyards include damage to agricultural crops, deer/car collisions, transmission of Lyme disease, and the over browsing of habitat which deer and other wildlife need. “Increasing deer densities through time can lead residents to a feeling that they have to share too much with the deer as the damage they do becomes less tolerated,” reports MDC. It’s at this point that wildlife managers begin considering culling local herds, usually by tweaking local hunting regulations.
Many animal advocates oppose such practices. In Defense of Animals (IDA) reports that even permitted sport hunting, under current wildlife management guidelines and outdated land management policies, contributes to deer overpopulation problems. “Currently, there are approximately eight does for every buck in the wild,” the group explains. “Laws restrict the number of does that hunters may kill.” Since bucks will often mate with more than one doe, the ratio of does to bucks “sets the stage for a population explosion.” And open season on both sexes won’t solve the problem, as too many does would die, stranding needy fawns and depleting the reproductive pool—as happened in the early 20th century when deer numbers fell precipitously low. IDA and many other animal protection organizations believe that sport hunting should be banned and that deer populations should be allowed to regulate naturally.
- See more at: http://www.emagazine.com/earth-talk/dee ... yJR6Q.dpuf

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http://bitesizevegan.com/environmental- ... -or-cause/
The overpopulation of deer in suburban areas can become a particularly dangerous situation when it comes to car accidents. The most commonly proposed solution to this problem is hunting deer to thin out the population. But is hunting really an effective method of controlling deer populations? Without of hunting, would we be completely overrun by a new mutant breed of deer overlords? Let’s find out!

This video post is going to be the first in a series addressing common myths about hunting. With the deer-hunting season upon us, at least here in North America, I thought it would be appropriate to start with the so often-cited argument that hunting deer is necessary to keep their population in check.

First off, something important to note is that when speaking about out-of-control deer populations, state wildlife management agencies will rarely use the term “overpopulated,” opting instead for “overabundant.” To understand this carefully calculated word choice, let’s take a closer look at the terminology.

Overpopulation means a population has exceeded it’s biological carrying capacity, which, by definition is the maximum number of individuals of a species that can exist in a habitat indefinitely without threatening other species in that habitat. This is determined by limiting factors such as available, food, water, shelter, and prey to predator ratios.

When a species exceeds its biological carrying capacity, it is officially overpopulated. In contrast, “overabundant,” the term hunting advocates use for deer populations, means…nothing. It’s not a scientific term and it has no fixed definition. It’s simply a way to make it sound like we’re going to be overrun by deer any minute now.

(Has it happened yet?)

In reality, if deer did overpopulate a given area, this incredibly powerful force called nature would step in to regulate. Trust me, this nature thing’s been handling things like this for a while now.

The problem of overpopulation arises only when humans interfere with nature. This is the most perverse element of the “we need hunters to control the deer population” argument: Deer populations become excessive because of hunting. The proposed solution is the source of the problem.

So, just how does hunting increase deer populations? There are two main ways. The first is orchestrated by state wildlife management agencies and the second is a direct effect of hunting practices.

Wildlife agencies, like State Department of Natural Resources here in the US, make some or all of their money from selling hunting licenses.

hunting license revenue percentage from Minnesota DNR
Example from the Minnesota DNR
Many of their mission statements explicitly state their responsibility to provide hunting opportunities. One of the ways they can increase these opportunities and thus increase hunting license revenue, is by clear-cutting forested areas to create habitat ideal for deer. The Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, for example, recommends clearing multiple areas, each one-three acres in size, a practice, which not only significantly boosts deer populations, but is also environmentally damaging.

Ned Caveney, a Department of Natural Resources State Forester in Michigan stated in the North Woods Call newspaper,

“We manipulate forest habitat to produce amazingly unnatural deer numbers–up to two million of the critters some years. That probably approaches two million more than existed before man got into the act.”
You’d think a department of natural resources would be concerned with preserving and protecting natural resources, right?

(What a preposterous thing to think!)

Well, to these agencies, deer are seen as a resource. Not as animals deserving protection and definitely not as sentient beings. They are financial resources to be exploited for the sole purpose of being killed for sport at a profit.

Even the terminology used equates these sentient creatures with plants and views them as pure statistic. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources states in their annual report:

“We rank first in the country for the highest single year deer harvest on record and are number one for deer harvest over the past decade. All of us work hard to keep it that way.”
Vegan activist Gary Yourofsky in his own article on hunting states:

“Everyone must understand that wildlife management is an illusory concept created around 100 years ago. There is no such thing as wildlife management. Humans cannot manage nature. The only managing humans should be doing is managing to stay out of the animals’ space.”
Now moving on to the second source of artificially overabundant deer populations: The practices of hunters themselves.

Conventional deer hunting is all about killing mature male deer, or bucks, with large antlers, leaving the female deers, or does, alone. A single buck can breed with multiple does, so while hunting reduces the number of male deer it does not reduce the number of offspring. This sex-biased hunting skews the natural 1:1 ratio of male and female deer to as high as 1:8, meaning one male for every eight females.

Let’s say that an area has 500 deer and each doe produces an average of 1.4 fawns, as 67 percent of mature does have twins. In a natural 1:1 ratio, this would yield 350 new fawns. Now, take that same 500 deer heard at the hunting-induced 1:8 ration and you now have 622 new fawns, almost 300 more than the 1:1 herd produced.

Simply put, hunting creates more deer.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t reiterate what i said in my video post “what would happen if the world went vegan tomorrow”–creating an artificially high population of deer and then stepping in to say you have to hunt to control this out-of-control deer population is like farting in a room all day and then saying, “Thank god I’m here to open a window otherwise we’d be overtaken by the smell.” In both cases, if humans hadn’t stunk it up in the first place, there’d be no “problem” to resolve.

Let me know your thoughts about deer overpopulation in the comments and be sure to share the post around to bust this myth!

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http://www.all-creatures.org/aip/nl-26m ... nting.html
Hunting Is Not The Cure But The Cause Of Overpopulation And Starvation

From Peter Muller

To see exactly how hunting is destructive to an ecosystem, let’s look at a specific game animal. Probably the most widely hunted animal in North America is one of the common species of deer (white-tailed, mule deer, or black-tailed with an aggregate of about 50 subspecies)

Let’s consider a naturally segmented area has sufficient browse to feed a deer herd of 400 animals. Wildlife biologists would describe this by saying that the biological carrying capacity of the area for deer is 400. A territory has associated with it a carrying capacity for each species that has naturally evolved there. Nature has mechanisms in place to ensure that the carrying capacity that is appropriate for that species is not exceeded. What would happen if the deer population increased to substantially over 400 in one year?

Let’s say that with all normal control mechanisms in place (including natural predators) the herd size reaches 500 healthy individuals. At the start of the next rut, several mechanisms would kick in to ensure a smaller amount of fawns the following year. If deer are hungry (not starving, but not well fed either), the sex drive of the bucks declines and the does stop ovulating or become receptive less frequently than they would if plenty of browse is available. Since the browse is now insufficient to feed all 500 animals, a portion of the deer population would not reproduce during that season. With the normal die-off during the winter and the smaller than normal birth during the spring, the total population would be reduced to less that 500.

Within a few seasons the populations would again stabilize around the capacity of the territory. If the herd size dropped substantially below the carrying capacity (say to 300), other natural mechanisms would kick in (for example, does who have lots of browse during the rut are more likely to have twins or triplets) to bring the population back up to the normal carrying capacity of 400. Many other mechanisms, some simple and some fairly involved and not yet completely understood, are used by nature to maintain the population at the carrying capacity.

These mechanisms with which the species have evolved have, built into them, assumptions that have been true for millions of years. Human hunting totally destroys some of these assumptions

Normally, left to their own devices, the sex ratio of male to female animals is about 50-50. Deer are born about evenly male and female. Most “sport” or “trophy” hunters prefer to take bucks rather than does. Almost state game agencies mandate that during the regular hunting only bucks (antlered deer) and no does are shot. Under certain extreme conditions, where a deer population has totally mismanaged for years “doe permits” are issued in addition to the regular deer tags in a desperate attempt to mitigate the mess that the agencies have created over the years. This policy of shooting out bucks distorts the gender ratio of the population.

Let see what happens when that ratio changes from 50-50 ratio to 80-20 –leaving four times as many does as bucks This is not at all uncommon. In Texas and the Southwest, in general, years of mismanagement have pushed the doe to buck ratio as high as 10:1 in some areas.

Let’s look at two herds – one unhunted with the gender ratio intact at 50/50 and one hunted and one hunted with the gender ration skewed to 80/20. Otherwise everything is the same both herds live in an area where there is sufficient browse for 400 animals. Nature’s mechanisms that adjust the population to the browse will now miscalculate and cause an overpopulation for the hunted herd but leave the unhunted herd stable at 400 animals.

Based on 50-50 ratio, a herd of 400 will consist of 200 bucks and 200 does. Normal browse conditions signal to each doe to give birth to a single fawn. Assuming a winter die-off of 100 deer. The surviving herd would consist of 150-buck and 150 does. Each of the 150 does would give birth to 150 fawns. The herd sized, including the new 150 fawns is now 450. Fawns have about a 2/3 chance of surviving until the next fall because they are subject to more predation than adult deer; for example, coyotes will predate on fawns but rarely on fully grown deer. Other mortality rates are also higher for fawns that adult deer. At the next rut the herd is back to 400.

Based on an 80/20 gender ratio, a 100 animal winter die-off, and normal browse conditions there will 240 does and 60 bucks in the surviving herd. The 240 does will give birth to 240 fawns of which 160 will survive. At the next rut the herd size is now 460 instead of 400. That’s a 15% increase over the normal her size. A few successive seasons like that and the herd approaches conditions where massive, catastrophic starvation and die-offs are inevitable.

Hunting is not the cure but the cause of overpopulation and starvation. Luke Dommer, the founder of the Committee to Abolish Sport Hunting, has proposed to several times to various state wildlife agencies that if they are serious about using hunting as a population control tool in areas where the sex ratio is already badly distorted, they should institute a doe-only season. (Taking no bucks but only does until the ratio is again stabilized at 50:50). All agencies have rejected that proposal – thereby giving up any pretense of ecologically motivated sound wildlife management. They quite consciously and openly state that they are in business to provide the maximum number of live targets to hunters each year.

The state agencies encourage the destruction of the naturally evolved ecosystem by encouraging human hunting that balloons the population of the game species at the expense of the non-game species. Management techniques, in addition to sex-ratio distortion, include removal of natural predators (e.g. wolves, coyotes, panthers, bears) altering the natural habitat to provide additional browse for game species and destroying the habitat of non-game species (e.g. clear-cutting and/or burning areas and sowing them with oats for deer at the expense of rabbits, voles, various reptiles and amphibians – and many other non-games species.)

Things sometimes go totally haywire if a species is introduced into an ecosystem where it didn’t evolve. Biologists call such an organism an “exotic” animal or plant. If the exotic animal is a prey species, it may have no defenses against a local predator and be totally wiped out in a very short time. On the other hand, it may not have any local predators and consequently proliferate beyond the carrying capacity of the territory, causing catastrophic die-off through starvation.

If an exotic predator is introduced, the exotic species itself may die out if there is no suitable local prey. Or, it may cause the extinction of local prey species who have no defenses against the exotic predator. Or, it may cause the extinction of local predators if it is more successful and out-competes the local predator species in taking the prey.

Numerous examples of the consequence of introduction of exotic organisms within environments where they have not evolved can be cited: The introduction of snakes into Guam during World War II to control the rat population nearly wiped out several indigenous bird species; introducing trout for sport fishing into Lake Titicaca in Peru in the 1930s wiped out about 25 species of local fish. Those fish were not found anywhere else in the world. There are hundreds of examples where the introduction of an exotic species had a deleterious effect on an ecosystem.

The wildlife management agencies defy sound procedure by such practices as introducing exotic game species into areas and then distorting the habitat to favor their survival at the expense of native species that have evolved in the area. e.g. stocking an area with pheasants –an Asian bird—and cutting tall timber trees needed by native raptors for perches.

The activity of human hunting is not and never has been a sustainable, mutually beneficial, predator, prey relationship. Human hunting techniques, even the most primitive ones, are far too efficient to meet the conditions required of a natural predator-prey relationship. In modern times, with new technology, the efficiency becomes totally lopsided so as to cause instant habitat degeneration. Add to this the conscious mismanagement of habitat to further degrade and obviate all natural corrective measures.

Using techniques such as sex-ratio distortion, habitat manipulation, the removal of natural predators and the introduction of exotic game species destroys biodiversity. The goal is to maximize the number of targets for human hunting, thereby destroying the naturally evolved ecosystems and putting them at the brink of total collapse.

The number of animals of game species (native and exotic) is maximized at the expense of all others. The naturally evolved mechanisms that insure biodiversity are short-circuited.

The only way that these ecosystems can recover is to prohibit human hunting and all other forms of non-sustainable consumptive uses of these animals. We should allow for the unfettered reintroduction and re-immigration of predators (which is occurring naturally). Stop “managing” the environment of those areas. When it comes to managing the environment, our knowledge is inadequate to do an even passable job. Even given an ethically sound motivation, which the state agencies now lack, we simply don’t know enough to do a better job than nature.

Rather than playing God, we ‘re acting more like the three stooges, when it comes to managing ecosystems. For the sake of life on earth, we must not allow the hunting and gun-manufacturing lobbies to continue to dictate wildlife management policies.

For more info: http://all-creatures.org/cash/
Committee to Abolish Sport Hunting
http://www.wildwatch.org/
Wildwatch.org Email: wildwatch@earthlink.net