By Philip Sean Curran
Monmouth County again will allow hunters onto its park system lands starting this fall to cull the deer population, a continuing effort to “improve forest health and wildlife diversity,” the county has said.
In the 15 years since the deer management program began, 6,857 deer, including 4,011 does, have been killed, according to the Monmouth County Park System. The 2018-19 season saw 687 deer killed, the largest single-season total. In its annual report about the program, the county said, in places with “overabundant deer population, deer consume ground cover and shrubs affecting birds and other animals that rely on this vegetation, and browse young saplings, precluding the natural regeneration of forests.”
“Changes in the forest composition from deer damage are clearly visible at many county park sites, threatening natural resources that were intended to be preserved by the county’s acquisition of the land.”
“It’s a forest health and wildlife diversity issue, where the overpopulation and over-browsing was critically impacting the health of the forests,” said Andrew Spears, assistant director with the park system.
He said there has been improvement in some parks. For instance, the county has seen some “rebound of the forest understory” in Hartshorne Woods Park, located in the Bayshore area, he said.
“That’s really kind of limited,” said Spears. “But we have seen some rebounding.”
The problems that come with white-tailed deer are not unique to Monmouth County, as other parts of the state confront them as well. Partly due to a lack of a natural predator, the deer population has grown in the state. As of 2010, there were an estimated 111,250 deer in New Jersey, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported.
Aside from damaging forests, deer are blamed for tick-borne diseases and for motor vehicle accidents.
Insurance company State Farm said in a report that there were an estimated 1.33 million auto-deer collisions nationally from July 2017 to June 2018. The same report noted motorists driving in New Jersey had a one in 232 chance of hitting a deer, ranking 33rd in the country.
“We have no data on whether we’ve had any impact on reducing the number of accidents,” Spears said. “But certainly when we implemented the program, although forest health was the primary reason, there were some secondary impacts of deer overpopulation, such as accidents with cars.”
Counties and communities have responded by hiring companies specializing in deer culling to reduce the herd. Princeton, in Mercer County, has had an annual hunt to help lower the number of deer-related car accidents. In Essex County, 1,682 deer have been culled in county-owned open spaces since 2008, that county reported.
Monmouth, however, relies on private hunters, who will pay more for a hunting permit. Starting this year, the fee will go from $25 to $40 based on changes that county officials approved in June.
“We did it really as part of an incentive program,” Spears said of the change.
The county will discount the permit fee by 50 percent for the following season for any hunter who kills three or more deer.
Also new for the upcoming season, Bel-Aire Golf Course, located in Wall Township, will be included among the sites in the management program.
A recent report by the county Park System said that “recent land acquisitions at Bel-Aire have increased the forested area and provided for parking separate from the golf center.”
Of the 687 deer killed in the past season, 408 were does, the county reported. Harvesting more does than bucks is “good news from a population control standpoint,” Spears said.
Overall, the deer killed in Monmouth’s program has trended up. In 2016-17, the total was 546 and in 2017-18, it was 604.
“We felt that it was a very productive and successful season from a population control standpoint,” Spears said of 2018-19. “So we’ve seen some leveling off of the deer populations. But we have a long way to go.”
