Council accepts Deer Task Force recommendations

Local deer might want to leave Bloomington soon. The city could be gunning for them as early as next year.

Bloomington City Council approved all advisory recommendations submitted by the Deer Task Force on Wednesday at the city council meeting.

Tailored to two distinct areas, Griffy Woods and southeast Bloomington neighborhoods, the recommendations included contracting sharpshooters who might use silenced hunting rifles to cull the deer in Griffy and using clover to trap and kill urban deer.

The task force’s recommendations were non-binding. No elected official is required to act on them.

Other recommendations were more benign: raising allowed fence heights, banning the feeding of deer and educating the public about the animals.

All council members supported the non-lethal recommendations, as did the citizens in attendance.

But the suggestion of lethal means has been controversial since the task force published its report in October.

According to the report, the deer in Griffy Woods are overpopulated and destroying the ecosystem.

The urban deer aren’t overpopulated but have instead reached social-carrying capacity, meaning residents’ tolerance of their four-legged neighbors has peaked.

Bloomington resident Travis Puntarelli played a song about a hunter who abandoned killing, complete with choral accompaniment. Many expressed their concerns that the task force’s science was faulty.

“There are no deer in Griffy,” Bloomington resident Mark Haggerty said. “I hiked through Griffy 200 times this year, and I saw only a handful of deer.”

The Indiana Department of Natural Resources does not suggest deer censuses because they’re difficult and expensive, IDNR wildlife biologist Josh Griffin said.

The situation at Griffy should be investigated by the National Humane Society before the city proceeds with lethal means, resident Jay Santa said.

He said the task force refused the NHS’s offer to conduct such an investigation.

Other members of the public said the science used by the task force is overwhelmingly convincing. Several residents said they had seen deformed deer and a decline in songbird populations and shrubs and bushes.

Deer are the primary contributing factor to the biological degradation in Griffy Woods, IU biologist and task force member Keith Clay said to the council by phone.

Clay’s colleague, IU biologist Angie Shelton, presented photos that contrasted healthy forest floor enclosed from the deer and barren-looking floor where the deer roamed freely.

A major problem is that deer are eating tree saplings, she said.

“No trees are regenerating,” Shelton said. “Not only is the deer population high, it’s extremely high.”

Council and task force member Dave Rollo said the situation in town is very different than Griffy, though.

Rollo presented the results of a nonscientific survey conducted by the task force. It suggested people in southeast neighborhoods have seen one to five deer every day and incurred $100 per-person in deer-related damages during the last year.

In addition to higher fences and abstinence from feeding, task force member Thomas Moore said residents can use a bow to hunt deer during bow season.

Council member Marty Spechler said that conflicts with the task force’s mission to use humane lethal methods.

Rollo said the most humane and effective method of reducing urban deer populations is using clover to trap and kill deer.

The survey suggested the majority of respondents, 45 percent, were in favor of using the traps, but some citizens said they thought it wasn’t safe.

Hunting expert Joel Caldwell said it was safe, but the trapping would stop if deer were too distressed before a biologist could arrive to shoot the animal. No one said how much stress is too much, though.

Though no one said what is humane, and what is not, the task force decided against trapping and relocating deer because it was more inhumane than killing them outright.

Griffin said relocated deer suffer from trap myopathy, or severe distress, and usually die with 26 hours.

Council member Susan Sandberg said regardless of whether recommendations were humane, doing nothing was most inhumane solution because overpopulation means deer will starve to death.

All council members said the task force’s two-year-long efforts should not be wasted. They voted to approve the advisory recommendations, 7-0-2.

Council member Steve Volan said if opposition groups want the recommendations superseded, they must provide better-developed recommendations.