"Too_Many_Tools" wrote in message
ups.com...
You make a good point about the migration of animals in response to
changing environment and food supplies.

Remember Ireland and the potato famine? The Dust Bowl years during the
Great Depression? Happens to us too.

The reason why the deer are so plentiful is that their pedators have
for the large part been eliminated and replaced by your and my
automobiles.

However, the reason that the deer are *out of control* is, first, the "hobby
farms" that sprung up in west- and northwest Jersey 30 years ago, and then
the low-density suburbanization of the region ever since. Houses are too
close together for hunting in large tracts of that area. But they're not too
close together for the deer. And the planting of lower shrubs and other
garden plants has provided a cornucopia for them. The density of deer
population in Princeton Township, NJ a few years ago was the highest in
North America.

The last time I looked, which was maybe ten years ago, a hunter could kill
11 deer per year in NJ if he got all the permits. And it's easy. A couple of
my friends got all 11 every year. But the number of hunters is declining
along with the range in which to hunt. The deer thrive in many times the
area in which one can hunt.

Based on the ever increasing numbers, drivers obviously
are not performing the pedatory function as well as who they replaced.

The predators left 200 years ago. Alpha predators don't do well in a place
this densely populated. Deer, on the other hand, do just great.


The bears and coyotes...well, when the food supply moves those animals
who depend on it moves with it. If garbage was controlled as it should
be, the bears will go away.

It hasn't happened. Since the bears moved in, townships in the NW corner of
the state have enacted controls. The bears are still there. They're just
more aggressive.

As for coyotes, if you know of a way to cut off their food supply, it will
be very helpful. They seem to have established themselves in the natural
balance. They are incredibly adaptable. They'll eat almost anything.

There are quite a few of them in the state. I just mentioned the couple in
Middlesex County, where I live, because I'm within cannon range of
Manhatten. On 9/11, I watched the smoke from the WTC through my attic
window.

It won't be and they won't either. They did
not just wake up one morning and think "Think I'll move to NJ" (they
are smarter than that ;) ), their food supplies and habitat have
changed to the point where they were forced to.

The theory is that they moved in from PA one drought year in which you could
wade across the Delaware River without getting your knees wet. The other
idea is that they just walked in from New York, as part of a general
expansion of the population into that part of New York State.

If there was something that "forced" them in, no one I've heard of has
mentioned it. A fair portion of that part of NJ is state land or just open
woods, so they got a toehold there. And then they moved into the suburban
areas a few years later.

Remember all that new
construction going on because of cheap money...when that new home goes
up, it is at the expense of someone's else home...usually the
wildlife's.

Cause and effect always happens and usually in ways we don't
anticipate.

TMT, any wildlife manager will tell you that the deer population in the
Northeast, particularly, has expanded enormously SINCE the suburbanites have
moved it. The whitetail deer is not a deep-woods animal. In this part of the
country, ground laurel is their primary winter browse, in the woods.

They thrive in burned-over and cut-over timber, where the new growth is low
enough for them to reach, including twigs and shoots, in winter. Of course,
a nice planting of domesticated woody shrubs serves the purpose even better.
I've seen them walking down the streets of some towns in the western part of
the state, munching on the shrubs.

And the wild turkeys have moved back in here, too. We had to chase some off
a soccer field last spring. g

--
Ed Huntress