How do you want your deer to die? It’s a question that has overwhelmed Mt. Lebanon and is being asked everywhere that human populations make natural predation of adult white-tailed deer impossible.
As a controlled archery hunt comes to an end and a sharpshooting program is poised to begin, Mt. Lebanon commissioners are considering whether to request state permission to conduct an experiment in nonlethal deer control.
At a September meeting, Kristen Tullo, Pennsylvania director of the Humane Society of the United States, proposed a study in which does in Mt. Lebanon would be treated with surgical sterilization, immunocontraception or a combination of both. In particular, the experiment would test the impact untreated does that immigrate into Mt. Lebanon would have on the population. The program is estimated to cost about $200,000, half of which would be covered by the Dietrich W. Botstiber Foundation, a nonprofit group known for funding animal-rights programs.
At a meeting last week, Stephanie Boyles Griffin, director of the Humane Society’s Innovative Wildlife Management and Services division, told commissioners that Mt. Lebanon fits the parameters needed for the test site and confirmed Botstiber’s continuing interest. But some conditions would have to be met, she said.
“To get a pure test result, the project would require that lethal deer control stop for five years,” Ms. Boyles Griffin said.
And because the experiment would not remove deer from the test area, she said, it would not meet the municipality’s goal of reducing the deer population by 50 percent in five years.
Commissioner David Brumfield said the debate has gone on long enough. In 2013, after five years of providing virtually no wildlife stewardship, Mt. Lebanon commissioners agreed that the 44 deer-vehicle collisions that had occurred the prior year were too many. In 2015, after years of deliberation and the failure of several half-measures of deer control, the collision rate had risen to 73, according to police records.
“Is our goal now to reduce collisions to half of the 2013 number when we started this or the current figure?” asked Mr. Brumfield.
In a subsequent phone interview, Jeannine Fleegle, a Game Commission deer biologist who has advised Mt. Lebanon commissioners, said that her personal preference would be to put as many tools in the hands of wildlife agencies as possible, including a variety of nonlethal means of deer control. The problem, she said, is that the technology has not caught up with the problem.
“Used in combination with lethal measures, a nonlethal option could put another tool in wildlife managers’ toolbox,” she said. “As much as we want that, the science isn’t there yet.”
In Mt. Lebanon, the use of contraception drugs has been suggested, and some products show promise. Recent improvements on the porcine zona pellucida vaccine, PZP, reduce but don’t eliminate the need for booster shots. But because re-application makes it impractical in wild deer populations, state and federal wildlife agencies consider the vaccine to be experimental and do not permit its use.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency has approved use of one-shot GonaCon, developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
“GonaCon still has limitations,” the department says on its website, “especially the need to capture and inject each animal.” The vaccine has not won the approval of the Pennsylvania Game Commission.
The Humane Society’s suggested sterilization protocol has yet to be embraced by a majority of Mt. Lebanon commissioners, and experimental tubal ligations or ovariectomies have never been approved by the state Game Commission.
Ms. Fleegle said she hopes proponents of the plan will thoroughly think it through.
“There’s an ethical side of the nonlethal argument, too,” she said. “People have to see past the method. If we do this, what happens then to the deer? How are they going to die? Because ultimately that’s what is being decided.”
If the Botstiber experiment were to be approved, she said, no deer would be removed from the municipality’s population for five years. Urban deer can live 10 years or longer, and their population doubles about every two or three years.
“If [commissioners] think there are too many deer now, there would be many more at the end of the experiment,” she said. “More potential human danger, more deer killed by cars and many more that are hit, injured and eventually die from their wounds.”
Old age is hard on deer. Ms. Fleegle said as deer age, their teeth wear until the animals are unable to eat. Some starve to death. Others grow weak and die of disease.
“You’re not doing the deer any favors by keeping the current population alive for many years, or even doing nothing,” she said.
The question commissioners and residents should be asking themselves isn’t “Should we control the deer?” she said, it’s “How do we want the deer to die?”
“Urban situations are completely man-made,” Ms. Fleegle said. “I know it’s unpalatable for some people to think about it, but these deer will not die a natural death, meaning killed by predators. As stewards who created this environment, it’s up to people to decide how they want them to die.”
John Hayes: 412-263-1991, jhayes@post-gazette.com.
First Published: January 19, 2016, 5:00 a.m.