Michigan city using sterilization program to control deer herd
Mt. Lebanon didn’t permit experiment
Mt. Lebanon’s controlled archery deer hunt resumed Dec. 26 after a monthlong break. Last week in Ann Arbor, Mich., a deer management experiment that was forbidden in Mt. Lebanon began its second season.
In a test of nonlethal surgical sterilization, white-tailed does are being baited, darted and moved to a makeshift veterinary clinic, where their ovaries are removed.
“We’re working in the two zones we were in last year with 90 percent [of does sterilized],” said Tony DeNicola, executive director of White Buffalo, the nonprofit Connecticut-based deer management organization that also coordinates Mt. Lebanon’s deer control program. A third sterilization zone was added in Ann Arbor this year.
The nonlethal program begins with the baiting and darting of deer near tree-mounted hunting stands and vehicles parked along public roadways. Only mature females are tranquilized, and volunteers help to transport the captured deer to a shed at a city-owned golf course. Veterinarians remove the ovaries, and the sterilized deer are fitted with ear
tags. A radio collar is attached to one female in each group to assess migration patterns and survival rates. The deer are returned, still unconscious,to the woods.
In 2017, the program treated 54 deer. This year’s goal is to sterilize another 26.
Phase 2 is scheduled for Jan. 8 through Jan. 31, said Mr. DeNicola, when sharpshooters attempt to kill up to 250 untagged deer in areas surrounding the sterilization zones to ensure that unsterilized females do not enter.
The “experiment” is not intended to prove the validity of nonlethal deer control. Mr. DeNicola said the program is structured to determine the duration of time before unsterilized does enter a control zone in which all of the mature females have been sterilized. Such corruption of the sterilized zone would render it vulnerable to repopulation.
White Buffalo and the Humane Society of the United States proposed a joint sterilization program for Mt. Lebanon, but the idea was scrapped in 2016. The Humane Society withdrew interest when it was determined that lethal deer reduction would parallel the sterilization.
The Pennsylvania Game Commission did not approve the experiment, expected to have run three to five years, because it was not designed to comply with goals of the municipality’s special permit for deer management, which called for a reduction in deer-vehicle collisions to 50 percent of 2013 numbers in five years. When the project failed to win Game Commission approval, a Pennsylvania foundation that supports animal-rights issues withdrew its funding offer.
The current phase of the Ann Arbor project could be jeopardized by the extreme cold.
In frigid weather deer tend to bed down to conserve energy, sometimes forgoing meals. Avoidance of baiting stations would diminish effortsto dart them.
“It will be interesting to see how they respond,” said Mr. DeNicola. “Will they move in midday when it’s warmer or move more at dusk? If they’re not moving and laying low at night, that could force us to change plans so we’re not wasting taxpayers’ dollars.”
Last year Ann Arbor paid $260,000 for the first season of the three- to fiveyear experiment.
In Mt. Lebanon, White Buffalo’s management of the 2017-18 controlled archery hunt will cost $9,000. In December, commissioners approved a $77,110 contract for the program’s third sharpshooting cull, which is expected to occur in February and March.