Deer hunting helps natural environment, Purdue study says

Mississinewa Reservoir Property Manager Larry Brown said that’s always been the case locally.

“We are part of the Division of Parks and Reservoirs,” he said. “The state parks traditionally had never allowed hunting, so they didn’t have that management tool (regulated deer hunts) available.”

He said the reservoir “has always had hunting here – the management tool was already there from the beginning.”

While Brown said there were locations where hunting might not be allowed, like maintenance or campground locations, he added there was always “enough hunting pressure overall on the property that we don’t have any issues with damage from wildlife.”

He said keeping deer populations under control is a priority.

“The natural predators - and I consider us a natural predator too - They just aren’t here to keep the populations under control,” he said.

Not controlling the population could bring about disastrous consequences, Brown said. He said that “potentially change the complexion of the natural resource.”

“For starters, there would be a lot more deer and car accidents. It would be rampant,” Brown said. “And we’d see the loss of certain plants that they focus on. And that has an overall impact on other wildlife species and vegetation.”

Indiana state parks historically did not allow hunting, the release stated. But by the 1990s, white-tailed deer populations in parks had swelled to such size that many species of native wildflowers such as trillium and lilies largely disappeared, replaced by wild ginger and exotic species such as garlic mustard and Japanese stiltgrass, plants not favored by deer. Oak and ash tree seedlings gave way to highly deer-resistant or unpalatable trees such as pawpaw.

Michael Jenkins, associate professor of forest ecology who led the study, said that while hunting might be unpopular to some, “it is an effective means of promoting the growth and richness of Indiana's natural areas,” the release stated.

“We can't put nature in a glass dome and think it's going to regulate itself,” he said. “Because our actions have made the natural world the way it is, we have an obligation to practice stewardship to maintain ecological balance.”

“Hunting in natural areas is controversial,” Jenkins said. “But when deer are overabundant, they start to have undeniable negative impacts on the ecosystem.”

According to the release, the study compared the amount of plant cover in 108 plots in state parks and historically hunted areas with 1996-97 levels. It found that total plant cover in state parks more than doubled from 1996-97 to 2010. Herbs such as asters, violets and goldenrods increased from about 20 percent to 32 percent cover, and percent cover of grasses rose from 1 to 3 percent. Tree seedlings jumped from about 2 percent to about 13 percent of total plant cover, a finding that suggests when older trees die out, there will be younger trees to replace them, Jenkins said.