Parks work together to meet goal of thinning deer herds
Updated: Jan. 11, 2019, 7:55 p.m. | Published: Apr. 08, 2016, 10:12 a.m.
By James Ewinger, The Plain Dealer
Landfill offered as dredging dump site But plan opposed by agencies, stakeholders
A herd of deer at the Harvard Refuse landfill on February 23, 2016. (Gus Chan / The Plain Dealer)
(Gus Chan, The Plain Dealer)
BRECKSVILLE, Ohio -- The Cuyahoga Valley National Park has long admired the deer-culling programs in the Cleveland Metroparks and Summit Metro Parks, crediting them with reducing the deer population in the adjacent national park.
This year the CVNP added another dimension, following the example of the other two park systems by deploying their own sharpshooters.
The national park has been considering such a plan since 2006, when park staff noticed that the CVNP deer population had fallen in half since 1999, to about 40 deer per acre.
Cleveland Metroparks began lethal culling in 1998, donating more than 290,000 pounds of commercially processed venison to the Cleveland Food Bank since then.
This year, Cleveland Metroparks rangers bagged 469 deer in 10 of the park system's 18 reservations. That netted more than 22,000 pounds of deer meet, 4,000 pounds shy of their all-time record set in 2001.
Summit Metro Parks culled 149 from seven parks, producing more than 6,200 pounds of venison.
U.S. Department of Agriculture sharpshooters working with the National Park Service took 350 deer.
Dr. Lisa Petit, the national park's chief of resource management, said that was the goal, and it yielded 15,000 pounds of deer meat, with about 10,000 pounds going to the Akron-Canton Regional Food Bank, the same destination for Summit's yield, with 5,000 pounds to the Greater Cleveland Food Bank, which also received the Cleveland Metroparks' meat.
The park service's wildlife health branch in Colorado tested samples from 420 deer for chronic wasting disease. Petit said the deer were a cross section of those culled by all three park systems, and the samples tested negative.
This was the first year for CVNP to cull, but it is not new to the National Park Service. NPS programs, especially out west, also target elk, bison and wild horses, according to the park service.
Critics insist that using firearms and powerful bows to thin deer herds is unnecessary because contraceptive methods provide a tamer alternative.
CVNP's Petit has said that current contraceptive technology does not meet all of the National Park Service's criteria.
The park service's contraception standards require that the drug be able to be delivered remotely, instead of by capturing and injecting individual deer. The drug cannot make the deer unsafe for human consumption, cannot affect the deer's behavior, and must be effective for at least three years.
Dr. Terry Robison, the director of natural resources, said remote-delivery technology exists, but the drug only lasts about a year -- and the deer still would have to be captured because they'd have to be tagged.
Deer culling is gaining traction with communities throughout Northeast Ohio in no small measure because of damage to natural habitat and private property, and frequent deer-automobile collisions.