Managers see little change in Key Deer herd

Status quo is the operative word this summer for the endangered Key Deer.

“Very little has changed in the make up of the deer herd over the last year,” said Philip Hughes, a biologist with the ecological services division of US Fish and Wildlife Service.

The service has been estimating the size of the deer herd at between 750 and 800 across all its ranges for the last several years and this year is no different, says Hughes.

That estimate is backed up by the average number of road kills of Key Deer last year.

Hughes said that the west end of Big Pine before the causeway on US 1 remains one of the top areas of concern for vehicle collisions with Key Deer, along with the area immediately east of St. Peter Church before the beginning of the deer tunnel area a secondary area of concern.

As with all year’s past, vehicle collisions remain the number one killer of Key Deer across all its ranges.

“It appears, at least anecdotally, that this was a good fawning season for twins,” said Hughes.

Wildlife managers had been concerned about the perceived drop off in multiple births among the Key Deer over the last six or seven years, but Hughes said early signs are that twins are beginning to rebound.

Multiple births enable the deer population to maintain its herd size, he says, replacing those that die of old age, disease, predation or vehicle collisions.

He also said that proximity diseases have become less pronounced in the last couple of years. The deer are able to get better forage grounds in their habitat as the local ecology continues to rebound from the ravages of Hurricane Wilma in late 2005. The majority of proximity disease cases are still seen in the Long Beach Road herd.

What is surprising, however, is that the peripheral herds established on Sugarloaf and Cudjoe Keys a few years ago have shown no sign of proximity disease, he says.

“Anecdotally, we also see that the deer have increased in size in some of the peripheral ranges. They appear to have better forage areas for the herd size than we anticipated and less density of population over those ranges,” he said.

Local watchers of the deer herd say that the primary herds on Big Pine and No Name, between the two islands home to about 90 percent of the Key Deer population, have also shown an increase in physical size over the last three or four years.

That coincides with the outpouring of sympathy for the deer after Hurricane Wilma inundated their forage ranges with salt water, believes Hughes. Even though the refuge prohibits feeding of Key Deer for many reasons, local residents, especially those new to the area, took a greater interest in the survival of the deer after the storm. People fed the deer, and usually fed them things that aren’t exactly part of the animal’s everyday diet.

“Feeding deer something we might find tasty isn’t in their best interests,” said Hughes.

Hughes said managers don’t expect to see any marked increases in deer numbers at any time in the foreseeable future, believing that the carrying capacity of the deer’s historic ranges is nearly at its maximum.

As part of the Key Deer recovery plan, penned nearly a decade ago by Roel Lopez while a graduate student at Texas A&M, wildlife managers translocated a couple dozen deer from the herds on Big Pine and No Name to both Sugarloaf and Cudjoe. The purpose of the project was to ensure long-range survivability if the primary herd were to be devastated by storm or disease.

Both those herds seem to be faring well with low road-kill numbers, little disease and less predation than the primary herds on Big Pine and No Name Key.

Because human-induced deaths, almost all by vehicle collision, are still the number one cause of deer deaths, Hughes said it remains important for people not to feed the deer.

Deer are creatures of habit and learn by rote, say wildlife managers. If they get fed next to the road on a regular basis, they come to equate the roads with food and hang around the road waiting for a meal. That makes them a more likely target for cars. Human feeding also causes the deer to lose their fear of humans. They hang around in residential subdivisions, which have roads, and wait for a hand out.

“It’s very unlikely we’ll see any further significant increase in the deer herd,” said Hughes. “The herd has developed to a point where it must regulate itself in terms of numbers so its forage area has the capacity to sustain members.”

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