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taco..allerton hunt article..long

bang250bang250 Member Posts: 8,021
Deer hunt scheduled at Allerton Park
Published Online Jul 26, 2004
By JODI HECKEL
News-Gazette Staff Writer

RURAL MONTICELLO - Hundreds of deer roaming the Allerton Park area are taking a toll on the vegetation there, chomping on flowers and young trees.
The number of white-tailed deer in the area has exploded in the last few years. To protect the park's flora and restore some balance to the ecosystem there, Allerton officials will allow bow hunting of deer inside the park this fall.
"It's a very measured way to deal with the problem," said David Schejbal, associate vice chancellor and director of the UI's Office of Continuing Education, which oversees Allerton Park. "People who really want to protect the environment will understand we have a responsibility to manage it for future generations. If we don't do something, the quality of the Allerton ecosystem is going to degrade rapidly."
Park officials have put up fences to protect some areas, but they can't fence the whole park.
"In the formal gardens and manicured areas around the conference center, the deer come right up and browse as high as they can reach. They would eat the gardens clean if they could," he said, noting deer ate some ornamental plantings around the Allerton mansion within 24 hours of them being put in the ground.
"More troubling than that, they do a lot of damage in natural areas simply because there are so many of them," Schejbal continued. "They like the native vegetation, wildflowers in particular, and they eat them as they are emerging from the ground so the flowers don't have a chance to go to seed. Because they can't regenerate very well ... the native species start to decline and invasive species start to take over and the forests become very unhealthy."
Schejbal said the deer also eat young saplings, meaning older trees aren't replaced as they die.
"Throughout the country right now, we're seeing a dramatic rise in deer numbers and variations of the same problems we're seeing at Allerton," said Dick Warner, a UI professor of wildlife ecology who has been studying the deer at the park.
In addition to destroying vegetation, the deer carry ticks that spread Lyme disease, and they are involved in nearly 20,000 collisions with vehicles each year in Illinois, Warner said.
UI biologists conduct counts of the deer population by helicopter each winter. The counts cover 7,200 acres, including the 1,500 acres inside the park boundaries, and show a steady increase in the deer population since the 1980s, with a dramatic increase in the past several years.
To confirm what its counts were showing, the UI brought in an expert to perform a count early this year. What he found was alarming, Warner said.
The count recorded 730 deer in the area, with 383 of them counted within Allerton Park, or 163 deer per square mile. Warner said biologists studying deer in the Chicago area estimate that 20 deer per square mile is tolerable and allows vegetation to recover from damage that larger herds inflict.
And biologists estimated the deer herd would produce 350 or more fawns this spring.
"We don't know what the acceptable number of deer for Allerton is, but we know we're way, way over it," Warner said.
The reasons behind the explosion in the deer population are an abundant food supply and loss of natural predators. Warner calls it the "nutrition hypothesis." The deer have natural vegetation in the forest and the flowers planted around Allerton to eat. They also have crops planted by farmers.
"We have deer that have an absolute smorgasbord of food," he said.
They are also in "phenomenal" physiological condition because of the abundant food supply and so are not as susceptible to disease that would otherwise reduce their numbers.
And as the Illinois landscape changed from prairie and forest to farmland over the years, animals that once lived here and preyed on deer, like the mountain lion and wolf, have gone, Warner said.
While the Chicago area relies on sharpshooters to cull deer, Schejbal said Allerton officials decided to allow local residents to hunt.
"We see the research we're doing and the hunting as part and parcel of the same effort - to learn how to live with the deer and manage them well so, for their health and human health, there is some kind of balance," Schejbal said.
The hunt will take place for 10 weeks from late October through December, with 30 hunters per week allowed to bow hunt in the south part of the park, which will be closed during that time.
Hunters must first take a doe before going after a buck.
Hunters can apply for a permit during the month of August. They will be assigned a week and an area of the park in which they can hunt. Application forms are available at the visitor's center at Allerton Park.
Each deer taken will be examined for disease at a check station.
Warner called the plan a "modest" step that will slow, but not stop, the growth of the herd.
"There is no experience with deer hunting by the University of Illinois in Allerton Park," he said. "We feel we need to go slow and learn how to manage a hunt. This is a low-intensity effort we think we can manage."
Warner said the UI wants to build on research done in the 1980s that first studied such trends in the deer population and to learn how to solve the problems they cause. The UI's approach will be one of "adaptive management" - taking small steps and monitoring their effectiveness, Warner said.
In the short term, that means:
- Slowing the growth of the deer population with the hunt. In addition, a sharpshooter will cull another 25 deer in early 2005. They will be examined more extensively than the ones killed in the hunt in order to give biologists more information about the animals' condition.
- Continuing to monitor deer herd numbers.
- Evaluating the impact on vegetation by comparing the vegetation in areas available to deer to that in areas that are fenced off so deer can't get to it.
- Examining all deer taken in the hunt for disease as well as evaluating their physiological condition. Biologists will examine the deer for ticks and test them for Lyme disease, study their organs for signs of disease, and establish a benchmark for the health of the herd.
Warner said deer are not only important to the local ecosystem as part of the natural food cycle. They are also loved by people who enjoy watching wildlife.
"They are highly valued, almost symbolic, of having nature in your back yard," he said. "They are valuable to rural areas for hunting. They are both among the most thrilling and among the most worrisome (wildlife)."

Why do they make it taste so good and put it in them little bitty cans- Dad

Comments

  • taco413taco413 Member Posts: 2,504 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited November -1
    Ya weren't kiddin it's long, and before someone says a thing I meant the article[:D] Thanks bang i'll pass it on to my freind. Keep us posted on how the hunt goes. BTW. Where are you located? I'm in Champaign alot.

    Only The Strong Survive!!!!!
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