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Editor, News-Register:
What do people want from Oglebay Park, a large deer population or a healthy forest community? We cannot have both. Many studies have shown unnaturally high deer populations harm a wide variety of native woodland species. Pioneering ecologist Aldo Leopold said "One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen." These wounds become visible if you walk Oglebay's trails with a naturalist or botanist (e.g., behind the Schraeder Center), and see the legacy of high deer populations.
Are you looking for wildflower species listed as common by park naturalists 70 years ago? Many species have vanished. Are you hoping to find seedlings of desired tree species such as oak, maple, black cherry or hemlock needed to replace mature trees? You'll have little luck; nearly all have been browsed away. Are you searching for the tree saplings planted by Nature Center staff and volunteers to fill in the gap? Also eaten. Are you birding to find certain songbirds that live in the forest understory? Nope, the forest shrubs they once nested in are gone.
Oglebay's woodland does provide some greenery, but much of it indicates poor forest health. Large, expanding thickets of invasive European Privet- a species deer does not eat - are choking out native shrubs and trees. Expanding lawns of invasive Japanese stiltgrass and garlic mustard, other species deer do not eat, are doing the same on the woodland floor. Deer don't just prevent native plants from reproducing themselves by eating their seedlings, deer avoidance of most invasive plants means deer help non-native plants outcompete the native plants.
I once proposed constructing one or more deer exclosures (plots where deer are fenced out) in Oglebay's woods to demonstrate how natural vegetation regenerates when protected from deer. I was told "politics" would prevent it. How sad. Where deer exclosures were established elsewhere, plant diversity and healthy age structure of tree populations (seedlings and saplings) improve.
Many scientific studies show unnaturally high deer populations harm many other species normally found in eastern U.S. forests. For an introduction, see Penn State's website "Issue: Deer Abundance." For a comprehensive, peer-reviewed scientific article, see the Wildlife Society Bulletin's "Rapid increase in sensitive indicator plants concurrent with deer management in an oak forest landscape."
Deer have it too good in Oglebay Park (and in much of the eastern U.S.). Vast lawns are a 24/7 deer feeder. This lets their populations swell more than if the area was fully forested. One evening this summer I counted 35 deer over two acres. Native predators don't keep their numbers in check. Human hunting has been insufficient. Fencing out deer is impractical. Evidence shows Oglebay Park's native woodland species would benefit by culling the deer herd, and bowhunting is a practical way to do it.
Bruce Edinger, Ph.D.
Science Department
The Linsly School
Wheeling