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BRECKSVILLE, Ohio -- The Cuyahoga Valley National Park has developed a draft plan to manage the white-tailed deer population, a plan that for the first time would allow sharpshooters to cull deer.
The public can weigh in on the plan during a comment period that runs through Sept. 24.
Lisa Petit, chief of resource management at the Cuyahoga Valley National Park (CVNP), said Tuesday that the park’s preferred method for controlling the deer includes culling by sharpshooting, fencing off large areas to promote forest regeneration, and using some form of contraception when the technology is perfected.
CVNP has been weighing different options since 2006.
Petit said that in 1999, the park had a deer population of 87 deer per square mile. The current population is believed to be 41 deer per square mile, or a rough total of nearly 1,700 throughout the park.
The optimum number of deer is about 20 per square mile, she said.
The number of deer in CVNP has fallen by more than a half, she said because the Cleveland Metroparks and Metro Parks Serving Summit County both employ their own rangers and other park personnel to shoot hundreds of deer each year.
The national park describes itself as encompassing 33,000 acres, but only 19,000 of those are federal land. Most of the rest belongs to the Cleveland and Summit County park systems and some private owners.
Petit said the Summit County system allows limited hunting to help curb the deer population.
The Cleveland Metroparks, which has been shooting deer since 1998, does not allow hunting. Last year sharpshooters claimed 319 deer in the Cleveland Metroparks with 15,952 pounds of venison going to the Cleveland Foodbank.
Petit said federal law forbids hunting in any national park, but sharpshooting for the purpose of reducing the deer population is not considered hunting.
Deer are becoming the dominant force in the park’s ecosystem, she said. One of the most evident effects of the deer browsing for food has been hampered forest regeneration.
Other than humans, the only other predators in Northeast Ohio that take deer are the growing coyote population.
However, Petit said coyotes only kill a limited number of fawns.
Coyotes are about a third the size of wolves, according to Stan Gehrt, a nationally recognized expert at Ohio State University. He said that unlike wolves which hunt in packs, coyotes are solitary hunters and favor rodents as a food source.
Petit said the National Park System will not import wolves and bears – the most successful natural predators of deer.
The public can offer opinions at open-house meetings Aug. 14, from 1 to 3 p.m. or from 6 to 8 p.m., at Happy Days Lodge, 500 W. Streetsboro Road (Ohio Route 303), a mile west of Ohio Route 8, in Peninsula.
The draft White-tailed Deer Management Plan/ Environmental Impact Statement is available at the National Park Service Planning, Environment, and Public Comment website.
Comments can be left at the website or mailed to the CVNP superintendent at Cuyahoga Valley National Park, 15610 Vaughn Road, Brecksville, OH 44141.
Petit said that once the plan is approved, the goal is to implement it by late next year or early 2015.
Can someone explain to me how we can't get a 17 year old girl to take her birth control properly and consistently, how a friggin deer is going to do this? Whitetail contraception is a better business than selling property on the moon. It's also good to know that a couple of 'ole ropes will keep the deer away...
Why they don't allow bow hunting on 14,000 non federal acres and actually solve the problem is beyond me...