According to state wildlife managers, there are more deer in Maryland now than at any other time in history, with population estimates ranging from 250,000 to more than 300,000 -- and unless a more effective deer management plan is implemented soon, those numbers likely will increase dramatically.
The Department of Natural Resources completed a series of public meetings last week in which possible revisions to the management plan were discussed and public suggestions for improvements were invited.
By early summer, DNR expects to have completed a draft of a new management plan aimed at effectively dealing with varied habitats and burgeoning numbers of deer in certain parts of the state.
"The most basic management decision is whether to control deer numbers at all," Tom Mathews, game program supervisor for DNR, said at the recent public meeting in Annapolis.
However, without some form of population control, wildlife biologists say, whitetail deer will outstrip their habitats and, in the process, damage, or in some cases destroy, habitat vital to other animal and plant communities.
"Regulated hunting is the most efficient and least expensive method, and wildlife managers see it as the only viable method of regional population control," Mathews said.
To keep the population stable, Mathews said, "It is generally necessary to remove 30 to 40 percent [of the population] annually."
In 1995, Maryland hunters killed 61,949 deer, less than 25 percent of the conservative estimate of 250,000 deer in the state.
As the deer population has increased, so have related problems such as crop damage, habitat destruction and deer-car collisions. According to DNR, for example, deer-vehicle collisions have doubled in the past eight years, and the number of permits issued to farmers to kill deer causing crop damage has increased 182 percent between 1988 and 1996.
Eric Schwab, director of DNR's Forest and Parks Service, said land development over the past 50 years has created "edge habitat replete with food sources deer like," and when that coincides with a reduction in hunting pressure in suburban areas, the result is a population explosion.
In good habitat, according to wildlife biologists, whitetail deer have the potential to double their numbers every one to two years.
