From the Post-Gazette, by Don Hopey
An aerial survey of the state's voraciously troublesome deer herd shows that recent Pennsylvania Game Commission policies have put the hunt back in hunting.
But in some areas, high deer densities continue to keep wide swaths of Penns Woods from living up to its name.
The state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources yesterday reported partial results of its first-ever attempt to count the deer herd.
The survey shows few deer in areas where there is no forest regeneration, little food and sparse habitat -- conditions created by dense deer populations.
Much of the acreage surveyed so far is located in the northcentral sections of the state where deer density has been so high for so long that forest regeneration has been stunted by the deer herd's feeding habits, and where the Game Commission's special hunting regulations over the last two years have allowed more deer to be killed.
"We believe the Game Commission's efforts to bring the herd down are working, but more time is needed for hunters to use [special] permits to take additional deer on state forest lands to further reduce the herd," said DCNR Secretary Michael DiBerardinis.
DiBernardinis said that because of high deer densities in many state forests, tree regrowth isn't possible after timber is cut unless fencing is installed to exclude deer that browse the young tree shoots to the ground. Enough fencing has been installed by state foresters to stretch from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh to Erie to Scranton and back to Philadelphia.
The night survey work performed by Idaho-based Vision Air Research is using wing-mounted infrared technology to measure the heat signatures of individual deer from an altitude of 1,000 feet or lower.
"In some areas, our flights show deer density far beyond what the Pennsylvania Game Commission deems suitable for available habitat," said Susan Bernatas, president of Vision Air.
J. Merlin Benner, state wildlife biologist, said the survey results bear out anecdotes by many hunters who complain about not seeing the numbers of deer that they used to in some traditional hunting areas.
"The habitat in those areas has been degraded and it will take a long time to build back up to where it can support bigger deer densities," Benner said. "How low the deer densities need to go to permit regeneration is a question we hope to answer with research, but we haven't seen any recovered habitat going on outside the fences for 100 years."
The survey found the highest concentrations of deer in the Promised Land area of the Delaware State Forest in Pike County, where more than 23 deer per square mile were counted. The second highest concentration was more than 20 deer per square mile in the Denton Hill area of the Susquehannock State Forest in Potter County.
The lowest concentrations reported are in the Cedar Run section of the Tioga State Forest, Tioga County, where less than 10 deer per square mile were counted.
Game Commission Executive Director Vern Ross said the deer count data will enable the commission and DCNR to craft hunting regulations that target the areas with the biggest herds.
The data released yesterday covered 300,000 acres -- 30 percent of the total acreage being flown for the survey and just 2 percent of the forested areas of the state.
The survey flights began in mid-February. Bernatas said all of the flying and infrared film interpretation should be finished by early May. No aerial survey work has been done or is planned in southwestern Pennsylvania.
