An easy 10-minute walk from Rheinstrom Hill Audubon Sanctuary and Center in upstate New York, a visitor can pause and take in two distinct forests. On the right side of a winding trail, the woods are lush. Crimson tips of sumac peek above a tightly woven bouquet of young oak, hickory, and aspen, and a tangled understory of blackberry and witch hazel conceals rummaging towhees and mewing catbirds. It’s a messy barrage of green, practically throbbing with life. Not so on the left side, where the trees stand far apart, like the remains of a half-used matchbook. Here the eye travels easily to the horizon, past barren stems poking up from a thin carpet of dead leaves. Even at the height of summer, this area is brown and eerily quiet, its silence broken only by the occasional knocking of a woodpecker. The difference between these two stands of woods? Deer.
As most anyone with a backyard garden can attest, there are a lot of deer sauntering around the United States these days. In suburban areas, it’s common to see deerproof cages wrapped around trees or dead deer crumpled on the shoulder of a road. One car dealer-ship in northeast Ohio marks “collision season” with its deer-for-steer deal, offering 20 pounds of beef to customers who bring in their deer-damaged vehicle for repair. Many cities and towns take a more tactical approach: Sharp-shooters set out after dusk, armed with silenced weapons and a mandate to thin ever-growing herds.
White-tailed deer are the most wide-spread and familiar deer species in the United States. While conversations about their overabundance typically center around suburban landscapes, there’s growing recognition that too many deer can jeopardize the health of forests, too. They provide easy transportation for invasive species and disease-carrying ticks, and their prodigious munching reduces the forest’s ability to store carbon. More worryingly, overbrowsing decimates the shrubby understory and prevents seedlings from growing into new trees, threatening the future of the forest itself.
Not just the plants suffer; so does every creature that
