[APWG] Fw: Deer Control Article in The Washington Post
Robert Layton Beyfuss
rlb14 at cornell.edu
Fri Nov 5 07:58:34 CDT 2010
Besides the carnage on the highway, deer are huge players in many invasive plant situations. One of my favorite definitions of an invasive plant is "a plant that deer don't eat". Here is NY I see many restoration efforts that are doomed before they begin because the deer simply decimate the natives as soon as they are big enough to browse. I would like to see more emphasis on trying to understand why invasions occur before eradication efforts begin. Determining how the invasive plants arrive is often easier then explaining why they have spread so rapidly. Most of the funding opportunities I see are for detection and eradication of invasives. It is too bad the people who are supposed to manage deer populations often do not take into consideration the effects of deer on native plants.
________________________________________
From: apwg-bounces at lists.plantconservation.org [apwg-bounces at lists.plantconservation.org] On Behalf Of Jil_Swearingen at nps.gov [Jil_Swearingen at nps.gov]
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Subject: [APWG] Fw: Deer Control Article in The Washington Post
Hi,
In case you missed this.
Thanks,
Jil
________________
JIL SWEARINGEN
IPM & Invasive Species Coordinator
National Capital Region
Center for Urban Ecology
202-342-1443, ex 218
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Subject
Deer Control Article in The
Washington Post
Cost of deer collisions
Estimated costs and number of annual accidents, by state
(Embedded image moved to file: pic20164.gif)Estimated costs and number of
annual accidents, by state
SOURCES: State Farm Insurance, Fortune Magazine | The Washington Post -
Nov. 2, 2010
The Washington Post, Tuesday 2 Nov, 2010, page A15
Deer overpopulation taking economic toll
By Allan Sloan
Monday, November 1, 2010; 10:26 PM
If you think deer are cute woodland creatures like Bambi, think again. In
the real world - to the extent that suburbs like mine are the real world -
deer are pests. "Rats with hooves" is the term for them in my household,
which is plagued by deer that eat our plants, defecate all over our yard
and show no fear of humans. Then there's the issue of Lyme disease carried
by deer ticks, an especially serious problem if you've got young kids or
grandkids. And there's the scare we got last year when a deer herd began
crossing the six-lane highway on which were driving at 60 miles an hour.
In the Disney movie, of course, hunters shot Bambi's mother. I used to
think that was terrible. Now, though, I think what's terrible is not that
Bambi's mother was shot, but that the hunters didn't also get Bambi, his
father, and the rest of the herd.
And since I'm supposed to write about business, not vent about wildlife,
let me show you some numbers about how appallingly expensive rats with
hooves are in terms of dollars and human lives.
We're talking big bucks here. (You can groan now.) Deer-vehicle accidents
resulted in more than $3.8 billion of insurance claims and driver costs in
the year ended June 30, according to State Farm Insurance. Such collisions
resulted in about 140 human deaths, according to statistics from the
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Serious stuff.
We're not even including the financial and social cost of Lyme disease, the
expense of hauling away deer carcasses, and the cost in money and time
protecting vegetation and crops from voracious deer predation.
State Farm estimates that in the 12 months ended June 30, there were 1.1
million deer-vehicle accidents nationwide that resulted in $3.8 billion of
insurance payouts and driver costs. The total exceeds $4 billion when we
throw in the cost of accidents in which no claims were made because drivers
had no comprehensive insurance on their vehicles, or no insurance at all.
The costs in the adjacent chart combine State Farm's estimate of an average
$3,103 per claim paid by insurers with the estimated deductible, $250,
absorbed by drivers. We're using a $3,353 cost per accident in all states,
because State Farm doesn't provide state-by-state data.
You see that in 16 states, costs run nine digits. In Virginia, by State
Farm's estimate, there were nearly 52,000 deer-related accidents last year
that cost $174.3 million. In Maryland, deer-vehicle collisions numbered
close to 32,000 at a cost of $106.9 million. Even the District of Columbia,
not known as a woodland paradise, has roughly 500 deer-vehicle accidents a
year, according to State Farm. (You can blame most of them on the deer
infesting Rock Creek Park.)
State Farm has published data about deer accidents for seven years to get
attention for its accident-mitigation tips: be especially vigilant from 6
to 9 p.m.; remember that deer usually travel in herds; don't rely on
car-mounted deer whistles; and so on. It does some interesting math to
reach its conclusions. It extrapolates total deer-vehicle damage based on
claims made by its policy holders. For example, if State Farm has a third
of the auto policies in a given state, it multiplies its cost and the
number of accidents by three.
State Farm says there were 21 percent more accidents reported in the
2009-2010 survey than five years earlier, even though vehicle-miles driven
are up only 2 percent. That's a telling statistic. It means either that
drivers have gotten a lot worse at avoiding deer, which seems unlikely, or
there are a lot more deer on the roads than there used to be, which seems
extremely likely.
Last year, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration counted 182
deaths caused by animal-vehicle collisions. The Insurance Institute for
Highway Safety estimates that 75 to 80 percent of those deaths involve
deer. Call it 140 people killed last year because Bambi was where he didn't
belong.
Look, I'm all in favor of cute woodland creatures - as long as they stay in
the woods, and aren't destroying the habitat on which plants, birds,
insects and reptiles depend. Yeah, deer are just animals and it's not their
fault, but they're a menace because there are far too many of them. When
you see the New Jersey Audubon Society allowing carefully selected people
onto its nature preserves to shoot deer, as it has since 2005, you know
that an excess of deer is an ecological disaster.
The next time some bleeding-heart tells you how cruel it is to kill deer to
keep them from hurting people and causing property damage, wave these death
and damage numbers around. Up with people! Down with Bambi!
Allan Sloan is Fortune magazine's senior editor at large.
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