Growing urban deer population could cause headaches for Great Falls residents

Seeing a white-tailed doe and her fawn walk quietly across your front yard on a Sunday morning is one of the joys of living in Montana. Seeing a dozen of them eating your shrubs and trees or dart in front of your car at night, perhaps not so much.

An overabundance of deer presents unexpected management challenges, especially within an urban environment where there are no predators, no hunting is allowed, and a ready food supply abounds in yards, parks, and undeveloped lots.

“Subdivisions on the edge of town are the deer producing areas,” said Cory Loecker, Wildlife Biologist for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP). “The deer are coming into town as a source population that basically never leaves. An urban deer will only die of disease or if they get hit by a car. That’s really all there is.”

Loecker spoke with Great Falls City Commissioners on Tuesday, offering some insight into how other Montana communities have addressed their urban deer problems, and offering to work with Great Falls city officials to draft an urban deer management plan.

“My job would be to help the city develop a plan like other plans you have in Montana,” he told commissioners. “It’s not about trying to eliminate every deer in town. It’s just to get it to where its acceptable for the majority of the city."

It isn’t entirely clear that Great Falls has a significant urban deer problem at this time. The total number of deer living in town is unknown; however, Loecker pointed out that FWP’s regional office in Great Falls now gets multiple calls each week about problem deer, both in town and in subdivisions along the city’s edge.

“We don’t survey deer in town, but we did do some deer surveys out towards the Fox Farm area, and it wasn’t uncommon to see 200 to 400 deer, mainly white tail deer in that area,” he pointed out. “Where Great Falls is located, with river systems dumping into town and through town, it’s a never-ending supply of deer.”

According to the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (AFWA), the most significant concern people have about human/deer interactions are human injuries, death, and property damage from deer-vehicle collisions. About 1.5 million deer/car accidents happen every year, resulting in more than $1 billion in insured losses, 10,000 injuries, and 175 to 200 human deaths.

“These collisions occur on all landscapes where deer and roads exist but occur more regularly in urban and suburban areas where both deer and motorists are abundant,” the AFWA report states.

The primary concern for wildlife management agencies in Montana is the potential for disease, especially the spread of Chronic Wasting Disease, an incurable neurological disorder that can decimate deer, elk and moose populations.

“The biggest thing for us is disease concerns,” said Loecker, “Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) is on the forefront with us, coming out of Canada. “It typically comes from high concentrations of deer. It can come from nose-to-nose contact. It can be in the soil, but mainly its high concentrations of deer. We had a positive CWD sample here just on the east side of town, and then one towards Belt. So, any concentrations of wildlife - we don’t like that.”

While Great Falls has thus far been able to avoid a significant urban deer problem not every Montana community has been as fortunate.

Problems with too many urban deer reached a breaking point in Helena in the mid-2000s. A Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) led survey of deer in 2006 found an average of 33 deer/square mile within Helena city limits and as high as 82 deer/square mile in some neighborhoods. Helena’s urban deer population was projected to exceed 1,800 by 2010 if no action was taken.

“Tolerance for urban deer by human residents of Helena has declined due to both the damage deer cause to private property and the public safety hazards that increase with increased densities of deer,” a 2009 report on Helena’s deer problem states. “These public safety hazards include deer-vehicular collisions, direct deer-human conflicts between does, bucks, adults and children, and deer-pet conflicts. Public health issues focus on the increasing amount of deer feces in areas where children play and spread of ticks from deer.”

The following year the Helena City Commission implemented the city’s first Urban Deer Management Plan, calling for the lethal removal of around 250 urban deer each winter.

“Every deer that is removed through us is tested for chronic wasting disease. Fish, Wildlife and Parks pays for that,” Loecker said. “Then the deer are donated to your local food bank.”

The deer culled in Helena provide about 5,000 pounds of meat to the Helena Food Share program each year. Lewistown, Fort Benton, and White Sulpher Springs have all adopted similar plans, which typically call for a regular survey of urban deer populations and to establish an annual quota of deer to be culled, most frequently by law enforcement officers.

“The options could be euthanizing through a weapon such as a suppressed .22 Magnum by an officer,” Loecker said. "It could be trap and remove – which means euthanized. We don’t trap and release deer because it doesn’t work. They don’t survive.”

“You could also do a hunt within the city limits,” he continued. “Roundup has tried that. You may have parts of the city that are wide open spaces where you do archery only hunt or with weapon restrictions. Those are typically in very small towns where they’re not worried about the issues that come with using a restricted weapon inside city limits.”

Getting an urban deer management plan passed also depends on the public’s willingness to tolerate a culling program. Many city residents enjoy seeing the deer. The thought of killing them where they stand can be emotionally distressing.

“Social tolerance is a bit thing,” Loecker admitted.

He recalled moving to central Montana in 2003 and being immediately thrust into the controversy of a proposed deer management plan then being formulated in Fort Benton.

“The public meetings were pretty heated,” Loecker said. “Obviously it brings out emotions. Seeing wildlife living on the edge of town or in town with an ornamental background – that’s a great thing. We live in Montana for a reason, but when there’s 50 deer laying on the football field in Fort Benton that’s a problem. It got to threats like ‘you won’t kill my deer over my dead body.’”

Fort Benton’s deer management was ultimately passed by its city commission and ultimately approved by the state’s Fish and Wildlife Commission. Twelve years later when the plan came up for review the public’s attitude toward the culling program had changed dramatically.

“It totally switched,” Loecker said. “Ninety-five percent of the people who attended the meeting were all for it, because they realized it was benefiting everybody in the long run, even the deer.”

Great Falls Mayor Cory Reeves told the commission he is proponent of an urban deer plan, but he still has some reservations about establishing one in Great Falls.

“What I’m not a proponent of is putting more work on our police officers,” Reeves said. “They’re taxed enough. Is there a program that can be implemented where we partner with FWP that you guys take care of dispatching the excess animals or is it truly going to be on the city to take care of that?”

“We have the same issue that you have with our enforcement staff,” Loecker said of FWP personnel shortages. “You could say in your plan that it could be FWP wardens, county sheriff’s office, city police department, or designated sharp shooters. You may get volunteers where they have to go through a strict process and be under guidance of your enforcement staff.”

Commissioner Rick Tryon admitted to seeing “a lot more deer around town” in the last year and a half, and in places where he’d not seen them before, but he expressed concern about the costs an urban deer management plan would impose upon the city. Helena spends around $30,000 a year on its management plan.

“I am concerned immediately about budget issues and personnel issues,” Tryon said. “I prefer that we put it on the backburner for now. I don’t mean forever, but maybe the budget we could come back and look at it again.”

“I understand this is not the most burning issue on the Commission’s table right now,” Reeves said, “but part of Helena’s problem is that they had so many deer when they started their plan that they’re still playing catch-up. Helena waited too long. I think we have a duty to get ahead of the game.”

This article originally appeared on Great Falls Tribune: City officials discuss an urban deer management plan for Great Falls