BY AMELIA POSSANZA

In print | Published January 29, 2009

Plans for the Crum Woods deer cull have been postponed due to a proposed change in Pennsylvania Gaming Commission regulations. The college applied to the PGC in the late fall to use sharpshooters to reduce the deer population. At the time, regulations stated that applications for permits should come from municipalities, rather than non-profit organizations such as the college. But the PGC anticipated a change, and news of this change reached Jeff Jabco, Co-Chair of the Crum Stewardship Committee. “When I spoke with the game commission in November, they told me to apply for the college because there were new regulations. What they didn’t tell me was that the regulations weren’t enacted yet,” he said.

This misunderstanding put the application into a state of limbo. The application could not be read until the new regulations were officially put in place. The PGC has yet to publish the new regulations in the Pennsylvania Bulletin, an act that will make the regulation valid. This is expected to happen sometime before the spring.

Once the change is official, the college will have to revise its application to include new dates for the cull. It is expected to take place over the course of the 2009-2010 winter break when fewer students are on campus.

The newly proposed cull date is set six years after concerns about the number of deer in the Crum began. A group of outside consultants determined that deer overpopulation was a major threat to the Crum Woods in December 2003. In their report, they stated that the large number of deer “has resulted in the collapse of plant species diversity in the forest understory and the near cessation of tree reproduction in vast areas of Pennsylvania forests.” They concluded, “[t]he threat to the Crum Woods is profound.” And in the past six years this threat has no doubt grown, with does giving birth to one or two fawns each year.

In March 2007 the consulting firm Natural Resource Consultants analyzed the deer situation and proposed several possible solutions. They suggested “implementing a restoration plan for mimicking the population-stabilizing effects of natural predators on deer in order to protect and restore the structure, diversity and function of Crum Woods.”

Using infrared technology, they determined that there are 50 to 70 deer per square mile in the Crum. To bring this down to a more sustainable number, they will have to remove about 100 animals. According to the report, the best method for removal would be using sharpshooters. They explored other avenues, such as controlled hunting and contraceptives, but each of these alternatives featured health or safety concerns.

The college’s chosen method for deer population management may be the only stumbling block that remains in this long process. Jabco said that earlier in the process the PGC wanted the college to consider a controlled hunt and is unsure whether this will continue to be an issue when a new application is filed.

But even if the cull takes place next year as planned, it won’t be the end of the story for the deer. Without any natural predators, the number of deer is sure to continue growing.

Monitoring techniques will be put in place to help the stewardship committee determine when the deer become a problem again. Jabco said that the main question the committee must continue asking is, “Are the trees and plants coming back?” In the future, when the plant life in the Crum is threatened again, the college will have to pursue further culls in order to maintain a sustainable number of deer in the woods.

Despite the anticipated efforts to control the deer population, the intention is not to get rid of them: “We still want to have deer in the ecosystem,” Jabco said.

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