Tickborne Disease Control Strategies Must Adjust to Reality, Researchers Say
Deer don't graze as they pass through neighborhoods on their way home to the woods—they actually live in neighborhoods, new UMD research finds.
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If your chewed-on hostas and decimated garden make you suspect that deer have put down roots in your yard instead of just passing through on the way to the woods, you might be right. New University of Maryland research debunks previous assumptions about how and where white-tailed deer live, and it has major implications for efforts to prevent deer overpopulation, and by extension, control the spread of disease-carrying ticks.
The five-year study conducted with the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) found that deer in suburban environments often bed down and spend the night within 50 meters of residential properties. The study, published Monday in the journal Urban Ecosystems, is the first to detail hourly movements of white-tailed deer throughout different seasons.
“A big takeaway from this study is that neighborhoods are the home range of suburban white-tailed deer,” said Jennifer Mullinax, assistant professor in the UMD Department of Environmental Science and Technology and senior author of the study. “Agencies monitoring and estimating suburban deer populations may be missing a huge part of the population if they focus their monitoring efforts only on deer in wooded parks and undeveloped areas, because a lot of the deer are actually living in the neighborhoods, especially at night and in winter.”
