THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, February 11, 1996 TAG: 9602110049
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DEBBIE MESSINA, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 112 lines
An explosion in the white-tailed deer population in South Hampton Roads is nearing critical proportions as deer and cars are colliding, crops are being devastated and suburban landscapes are being stripped.
``The deer population is beyond what the land will support,'' said Mack Walls, a wildlife biologist with the state Department of Game and Inland Fisheries. ``Deer are nice to have around. Who doesn't like them? But it's become a problem because their population has grown beyond capacity.''
Virginia Beach agriculture director Louis Cullipher said that deer numbers have ``reached a proportion that they're causing problems with safety and browsing.''
The deer herd is also growing statewide.
Five years ago, state game officials estimated the population at 850,000. Now that number is 950,000, even though hunters kill about 200,000 deer each year and another 50,000 are killed by motorists and illegal hunts.
The proliferation of deer and spread of residential development into the countryside is bringing the animals closer to where we live.
Two weekends ago, two accidents involving deer occurred on Indian River Road in Virginia Beach.
``I've never seen anything like it before,'' said Rodney Moore, who works at Pungo Mobil Servicenter, which in the last month has towed three cars that had hit deer.
``It's been unreal the last couple of years,'' said the longtime Pungo resident and deer hunter. ``Anywhere you go down here you see deer. It ain't nothing to see 15 or more in a herd.''
Several weeks ago, a deer became trapped in a new Virginia Beach townhouse off a wooded section of Seaboard Road. A construction worker unknowingly locked the deer in the unit, which was not yet inhabited.
The deer smashed a window, and subsequently smeared blood on the carpet and walls of the unit trying to get out.
Always a scourge to farmers, deer are destroying greater acreages of crops.
About 1,000 acres of Suffolk's 14,000 acres of peanuts were eaten last year, said Suffolk agriculture extension agent Cliff Slade.
Virginia Beach farmer Bonney Bright said he has lost thousands of dollars from deer chewing on his crops. One of his soybean fields yielded one-third of a bushel per acre instead of the anticipated 40 bushels per acre. Twenty acres of green beans were devastated. Nearly half of his watermelons were eaten.
``I mean, that hurts,'' Bright said. ``We as farmers know we're going to have some deer damage. But we just can't keep losing.''
Bright knows one landowner who is offering his fields to farmers rent free because the deer are so prevalent there. But it's still not worth it to Bright, who said ``he'd have to pay us to work it.''
According to state game department, agricultural crop damage caused by deer in 1992 reached $11.4 million in the state.
In some neighborhoods bordering wooded areas, deer are dining on expensive bushes, shrubs and flowers. In Virginia Beach's Lago Mar section off Sandbridge Road, evidence of deer has been found on porches.
``Controlling the deer population is the challenge of the future,'' Walls said. ``Determining when you have too many deer is not always relative to habitat or food, but how much damage people can tolerate.''
Several factors have contributed to the growing number of deer here. Many contributors we unwittingly created.
``In Virginia Beach, we've created an ideal habitat for deer,'' Cullipher said.
For example, farmers are planting more soybeans than ever. And soybeans are one of the preferred foods for deer. ``Deer are more prolific and larger where they can eat soybeans,'' Cullipher said.
Also, deer hunting is not as popular as it once was.
Similarly, residential development and the purchase of large tracts of land in Virginia Beach for Back Bay National Wildlife Refuge and the North Landing River wildlife preserve have reduced the opportunities for hunting. Many of these areas were traditionally popular hunting grounds.
In some ways some residential development, like golf course communities with wide-open spaces and large vegetated lots, have encouraged deer.
``Those habitats are improved for deer,'' Walls said. ``You create diversity. There's more food, more grass, more shrubs. They like it and they feel protected there.''
An overabundance of deer poses a hardship not only to people but to other wildlife and to themselves. When deer overpopulate, they tend to die pitiful deaths as they succumb to starvation and disease.
In their feeding frenzy, deer are destroying some nesting and feeding grounds for other wildlife, particularly neotropical migratory birds, at the Back Bay refuge's newly acquired woodlands.
To control the deer population, the refuge is considering opening some of its 3,200 acres on the west side of Back Bay to hunting. An annual controlled hunt is now conducted only on the refuge's original acreage along the Atlantic Ocean.
Joe McCauley, assistant refuge manager, said the refuge will be soliciting public input on implementing a hunting season. ``We know people are very concerned about safety,'' he said. ``In a program that proposes firearms, that's understandable.''
He said mechanisms can be built into the hunt to minimize risks, such as allowing hunting only from a stand so shots are fired downward.
State parks are also starting deer hunts to help thin the herd.
The state initiated controlled deer hunts for the first time last fall at three state parks. At two other parks, the deer hunting was permitted for a second year.
The deer at these parks are eating all the vegetation that birds and small mammals rely on.
``It was so bad at Caledon (Natural Area in King George County) there were no living plants below a 5- or 6-foot browse line,'' said Gary Waugh, parks spokesman.
While more aggressive hunting programs throughout the rural areas is an option to keeping deer herds manageable, that alone may not suppress the population.
``This is going to be a challenge,'' Walls said. by CNB