Essex and Union Counties are Leaders in Land Management
White-tailed deer
So why is it that Essex County at South Mountain Reservation and Union County at Watchung Reservation have emerged as leaders when it comes to management of white-tailed deer?
The 10-day hunt in the South Mountain Reservation is designed to cull white-tailed deer, which reproduce quickly and are a problem for many New Jersey communities because they ravage vegetation, cause traffic accidents and carry ticks that spread Lyme disease.
Essex County Executive Joseph N. DiVincenzo Jr. said the hunt will be held from Tuesday until Feb. 26. He said the area “is being devastated” by the hungry animals.
I know several non-profit conservation organizations have been working for over a decade with these counties, installing demonstration deer exclosures and helping to build the case for more aggressive deer management. So there certainly has been a lot of public education. But there has been a lot of public education throughout the state, yet other counties aren’t as aggressive in dealing with this devastating problem.
The one thing that seems to be missing in Essex and Union Counties is a strong place-based hunting constituency. Both counties are completely urbanized and suburbanized and lost the rural hunting culture a long time ago. My theory is that this frees them to manage their deer herd without the biases of traditional wildlife management. They were free to consult ecologists and other experts at lowering deer populations, rather than more traditional deer managers that want to bag a big buck.
This realization is counter-intuitive. You would think that as the rural culture disappears, support for hunting deer would decline. Essex County Executive Joseph N. DiVencenzo and others in Union County have been able to make a very sophisticated political argument to a suburban and urban constituency: deer population control is necessary for public safety, public health, and because they “ravage vegetation”.
Jon,
That is a very interesting take on deer management and likely to hold a lot of truth. Ultimately, our goal is to convince hunters that less deer is good not only for promoting forest health by for producing bigger bucks. There has to be a change from quantity to quality in the deer herd — If hunters will not accept this change, then we will be fighting uphill. Hunters are VITAL LAND MANAGERS, but if this change is not widely accepted among all hunters than the only option will be case-by-case local culls managed by government entities. From the statewide perspective, this will only bring limited success.