Our next presenter is 
Paul Curtis. Paul could you share your
presentation while I give you an introduction,
please? Paul D Curtis is a professor of
wildlife science
in the Department of Natural Resources
at Cornell University
His degrees are from West
Virginia State, Colorado State,
and North Carolina State. His research
interests include human wildlife
conflicts
in suburban forests and agricultural
landscapes, wildlife fertility control,
and resolving community-based wildlife
issues. And he has supervised research
with
deer, colonial water birds, and urban
geese
and bird damage to fruit crops. He has an
extensive extension
programming including literature,
background including being co-author of
the national wildlife
control training program. Paul?
Morning everyone. Similar to Dina's
presentation
I want to talk about deer management and
deer management is not something that's
usually taken on
by schools but yet to be effective
deer management really
should be done in the community level. So
I want to do two things.
First, since it may be a new topic for
folks, I want to talk about sort of the
basics of
deer management in New York State and how
that's accomplished. And then I want to
focus the second half of the
presentation on
how schools can get involved. So let's
get started.
First, most of you are aware deer
density varies depending where you're at
in New York State so
for example in the North Country in the
Adirondacks
deer densities are at their lowest so we
see fewer issues with deer management,
versus southern and central New York or
going down into the
lower Hudson Valley, Long Island that's
where deer densities tend to be
highest. You see many more communities
involved with
deer management issues in those parts of
the state.
We talk about what can be done if we're
not going to do any type of population
control.
Then it's either hands off just live
with the issues that deer create
or do some type of damage control on a
property by property basis using either
repellents
or fencing. I want to emphasize that
feeding deer
in New York State is illegal. You can get
ticketed by a conservation officer
for feeding deer within 300 feet of a
public highway in New York State.
So that just creates more problems for
people who feed
deer. If you want to do population
control
and reduce impacts associated with deer
then you're looking at either lethal or
non-lethal methods.
The only one that has any promise on the
non-lethal side is fertility control.
That has been shown in some situations
where you've got
fenced or closed populations to have
some success.
But most communities are not going to be
able to do that because it's still
considered research in New York
and you need a research permit to do deer fertility control on a
community scale.
So that leaves lethal methods. And most
communities are going to do one or two
things:
some type of a hunting program at the
community level,
or maybe have professionals come in and
do a
bait and shoot type effort.
There are three scales in New York for
deer management.
One is the individual property, and we've
already talked about fencing and
repellents an individual homeowner can
do to
protect their plant materials or to keep
deer off their property.
What I'm going to focus on today is a
community scale
and how people can work together to try
to reduce
impacts associated with deer. And the
third scale
is the landscape scale or the county or
the
wildlife management unit scale. And
unfortunately
many of the regulations that we see in
New York State are really designed to
work at this broader scale.
So things like doe tags and hunting
permits or bonus dough tags or special
seasons or extended hunting season;
most of these hunting related policies
and regulations are designed to manage
deer
at the state wildlife management unit or
the town scale.
They really are not all that effective
on a property by
property basis. And that's where
communities get involved.
When we get down to a specific
neighborhood or a specific
property, really the only management
tools that DEC
our state wildlife agency has to manage
deer are either
deer management assistant program tags
or deer damage permits. And we'll talk
about
both of those a bit more.
So deer population management... Removal of
deer is
primarily accomplished in New York State
by managed hunting.
In most of the southern two-thirds of the
state
hunters can apply for DMPs or
essentially doe tags to take
antlerless deer. It's controlling the
female segment of the herd
that really control potential for
population growth. You can
harvest as many bucks as you can
and that's really not going to
impact deer populations. You really have
to focus
management on the female. Deer management
assistant program, the DMAP tags, are for
landowners that usually have 50 acres or
more.
Most often used on farm and forest lands
where
deer damage is excessive; either the
forest regeneration or the deer damage
to crops.
And those permits are applied for by
the landowner,
given to the landowner, and then the
landowner gives them out to hunters on
the property.
The deer management focus area is an
experiment. It's only in the Ithaca area
so that really doesn't apply to most of
the state.
The deer damage permits are for using
bait and shoot operations.
Those are permits given out by DEC
to landowners or communities to remove
deer
outside the regular hunting season. So
DDPs are only used when
hunting seasons are closed and deer are usually
baited into a safe area
and then removed from the property to
reduce impacts.
Like any wildlife management issue deer
management's no different. I like to
apply IPM principles. And so on any given
property or in any given community
usually there's
a combination of techniques that are
going to help reduce deer conflicts:
things like fencing or repellents on an
individual property,
population management (removal of deer at
the community level)
or again plant selection (designing deer
resistant landscapes),
reduced damage to ornamentals is possible
on a property by property basis.
So where do schools fit in? We're not
going to be conducting
active deer management on schools, but
schools can support
deer management efforts at the community
level. Under New York State law you
can't discharge a firearm or a bow
within 500 feet of school grounds. So
there's no hunting on school properties; that's
not going to happen.
But, schools provide a safe venue for
community meetings in many communities
that
I work with around the state. We often
hold educational programs or stakeholder
information groups at local schools
because everybody's familiar with their
school. Schools provide an
opportunity to educate both youth and
adults on key
deer management issues. And schools have
a stake in the issue
and in the community. Also, as Dina noted
schools provide an
opportunity for in-class civil education
in discussion of the political process.
So
deer management can be an issue that's
discussed in older age groups in class
to
teach students how the political process
works and how they can be
active in the community to make change.
So why do we use community-based deer
management? And
really the big issue is it's relevance
to stakeholders.
Stakeholders are people who are impacted by
deer.
And impacts are typically perceived at
the community level.
We'll talk a bit more about that in a
moment.
Also at the community level management
actions can have an observable effect.
So if just one or two property owners
control deer
that's not going to control populations
or impacts.
It's when the community gets together
and groups of landowners work together
to
provide access to deer that you start to
see observable effects
and reductions in things like deer-vehicle collisions or reductions in
damage to ornamental plants or crops.
Also within the community social norms
and networks exist.
You've seen people that are involved
with local churches, and schools,
and stores, and everything share
information.
So if you educate some folks in the
community they pass that information on.
Those social networks are extremely
important for getting people involved.
Again,
participate have a stake in both the
issue - the deer management issue -
and in the community they want a better
quality of life. That's why people
manage deer.
And finally it increases agency image and
credibility, when the agency is responsible to
stakeholder concerns.
So who are stakeholders? Well,
a stakeholder is anybody
that experiences the impacts from
wildlife. And impact can be
both positive or negative. For example,
many people like to hunt deer and that's
a positive impact
associated with deer. Many people like
to view wildlife and again
view deer in their community that's a
positive impact. But on the flip side
of that,
deer also have negative impact. Things
like deer vehicle accidents,
damaged landscape ornamentals, and crops,
vector-borne or tick-borne diseases.
Those are the negative impacts that
usually
people are trying to manage and reduce
those negative impacts
and that's why communities get involved
in deer management.
So typical stakeholders we see
in communities that actively manage deer are obviously the state wildlife management
agency,
because they're going to be providing
permits, enforcing regulations and
policy.
Local government officials often get
involved because they have to make
decisions
that affect the community and deer
management costs money. It's like
anything else. And often
local government officials have to
approve
budgets associated with programs.
Animal welfare groups are concerned
about how management's done.
They get involved. Homeowners
associations, hunters, motorists, farmers,
and other groups can get involved. All
of these are potential stakeholders in
deer management issues.
I want to emphasize there's two
different types of stakeholders that are
important.
One is the first group that's
people who are concerned with the end.
The resource outcome is a magnet. So say
the management issue in the community is
deer-vehicle accidents, people want to
see
fewer deer struck by a car. And so they
want to reduce deer numbers, because
fewer deer means fewer accidents. It's a
probability of contact on a highway.
And so there are stakeholders that are
concerned with getting
deer-vehicle accidents down by reducing
deer. But there's a second group of
stakeholders that's also important. And
they're the ones that are really considering about the
means of deer management. In other words, 
how deer management is done. Is it a
bait-and-shoot program?
Is it a hunting program? Are they
interested in fertility control? Some
type of non-lethal
intervention? Or some type of fencing or
change in plant selection?
So there are two different types of
stakeholders in here,
and these groups can overlap. Some people
may be concerned with both the ends and
the means, but
you can't just be concerned about the
number of deer on the landscape. How you
get there is also important to many
people.
Al Hahn when he was a faculty member on
campus many years ago
talked about public issues education and
issue evolution.
And we're talking about deer, talking
about mosquitoes, we're talking about
water quality. All these things are
public issues.
And usually the way they evolve is some
people express concern,
and more and more people in the
community start to get concerned.
Groups start to forum; you get public
involvement.
Those citizen groups start to become
active. They contact elected officials
wanting some type of relief of the
problem. That's a public issue.
And so usually what happens at that
point elected officials will
form a citizen task force or a
stakeholder information group
some type of community-based group to
study the issue.
And so that group will often start
talking about
what alternatives can we do to manage
deer. What are the consequences of these
alternatives?
And often prepare a report or
recommendations that go back to the
elected officials.
And then it's the town board or the
mayor or the town supervisor
that has to make a choice and do what's
best for the community,
and then implement and evaluate the
program. And sometimes...
I made this cycle circular because this
happens several times. Sometimes the
first
management program's not successful.
People need to go back to the table and
rethink things
and come up with a better plan, a better
strategy. So this is often a
circular and ongoing process.
Stakeholder input groups or citizen task
forces are extremely
important for identifying both the
objectives of management - what are the
concerns the community has -
and then also for identifying what types
of management
actions are going to be acceptable in a
community. And these stakeholder
input groups are really a critical step
in the process.
And people need to come out and
volunteer
time and effort in order to come out and
really focus on what's important for
for deer management locally.
These types of programs aren't without
challenges and issues.
Doing an effective community based
approach takes a lot of time and
resources.
One community that I work with locally
met 41 times
over a year and a half to come up with
an effective program that they finally
implemented.
That's a huge amount of volunteer time
and effort, and so
it really has to get people who really
want to see things happen and really
want to be involved in
finding solutions. There are changing roles
for both
agencies and stakeholders. This isn't
business as usual.
When you have community-based management
you're
sharing management authority with local
citizens.
And often they run into institutional
barriers or
community capacity barriers. Not every
community is able to do that.
You've got to have local leadership
who's willing to take charge,
willing to chair meetings, willing to put
in the time and effort
that it takes to be effective at this
type of thing. And there's a lot of
both individual education and community
education that needs to happen.
Another challenge of community-based
approaches is problem identification
and data interpretation. Do you talk a
lot about science? And just like
insect management we use science to
manage deer.
And some people can look at the same
data set and same estimates of deer
abundance or same
number of vehicle accidents reported and
question how those data were collected
how valid is the information. And so
you've got to come to agreement on what
the problems are,
what the data say, and how best to handle
the situation,
interpret those data. And then there's
finally policy constraints. Many communities have discharge laws to
protect public safety. So you can't
discharge firearms or bows within a
community.
That really limits management
capabilities, because if you're going to
do any type of population management
you need to be able to remove deer. So
you've got to work through the
policy constraints. And it may mean that
the citizens have to get together and
change a local regulation
or a local law. And there are constraints
even at the state level. There's
discharge
regulation requirements in the state of
New York. For example you can't discharge
a firearm within
500 feet of a school or any type of
occupied
dwelling or building. Bows, if it's a
crossbow it's 250 feet.
If it's a vertical bow and arrow it's
150 feet. So there's all these different
laws and regulations
that you have to take into account that
really
change access to deer, and that's
critical. If you don't have
access to deer in a community, or the
housing density is too high
then you don't have any chance to do
population management.
What are some of the benefits of
community-based management?
By far, discussions that folks have
enhanced the decision-making climate. And
people make
better decisions when they get together
and talk about the problem and set
common goals.
Also community based management develops
political support for action.
As I mentioned, it's going to probably
take some type of
a budgetary decision from elected
officials to support a management
program.
It increases effectiveness and
acceptance of deer management.
Most people don't understand what deer
management's all about.
So there's some education that has to go
on for people to be
accepting and willing to manage deer.
Increases trust
not only between stakeholders but also
between stakeholders and government
stakeholders in the state wildlife
agency.
Improves agency credibility. Enhances the
quality of public
judgment because people are making
more informed decisions. 
And it increases community capacity
empowerment.
Our goal is to build dialogue and to do
co-education so people are making good
and informed decisions about how best to
manage deer
to reduce impacts in the community.
So anybody who manages deer realizes
quickly that this isn't
a simple process or a simple situation.
And sometimes as
managers we feel you're damned if you do
damned if you don't because it's hard to
get everybody
on the same page. And so difficult
decisions need to be made.
Elected officials need to be willing to
take
heat from time to time. Managers are
going to get
criticism about deer management
particularly if there's a lethal program
there.
But you've got to be willing to make a
tough decision and move ahead with what
the community desires.
There are many, many challenges with
urban deer management. This
isn't a simple process. Biggest one is
cost.
Anything beyond normal hunting programs
are going to cost additional dollars, and
many communities implement
taxes. The ones I've seen that have been most
effective often have a small
tax associated with a program that
provides a few tens of thousands of
dollars
to conduct the program. So there's a
budget in place. It's going to happen every
year.
There's a line item for it. Public safety
is hugely important.
People are concerned about discharging
bows and firearms particularly around
homes.
And so police need to be involved. You
have to interact with your local police
agencies and get
sign-off from the police chief and
often the police chief is involved in
selecting safe shooting sites for deer
removal.
Public values and communications are
important. Again,
people value wildlife differently and so
you've got to communicate effectively
in order to get people on board. Access
to deer
is absolutely critical. Most deer
management occurs on private lands.
And so you've got to have homeowners or
groups of homeowners particularly on
smaller properties that are willing to
get together and provide
access for the deer management to
occur.
Discharge distances: we've already talked
about the
500 foot discharge minimum distance from
a home
for a rifle unless you've got the
landowner's permission.
Setting reasonable goals: deer
management's not something you do once
and walk away.
It's like anything else. I talk about
deer management sort of like mowing the lawn.
You're going to have to do it year after
year after year once you start a program
to be effective. Same thing I think Dina
would save a mosquito control.
It's something that's an ongoing process
that you're going to have to address it
every year to be effective. So these type
of challenges make deer management
complicated. Some community
recommendations...
In areas where hunting's not feasible
usually the best approach to reduce
deer numbers and associated impacts is with
a bait-and-shoot type of program at
night with
rifles, bows, or crossbows, or else
contracted out with professionals.
USDA wildlife services does that. 
Groups like White Buffalo the private
contractors will come in and for a fee
do deer management in a community.
Resident support is
absolutely essential. If people
aren't on board
then DEC is not going to provide the
permits necessary to do
deer management. That's where community
involvement in schools
and education are absolutely critical.
For some areas
you can fence deer out. So you've got
small areas with high value planting
or like children's playgrounds where you
don't want deer dropping ticks.
Just fence deer out of those areas so
that you don't have to worry about it.
Non-lethal deer management, things like
sterilization and contraception
have not been affected to date with
free-ranging deer.
So we usually don't recommend those
programs. And again they require a
research permit in New York State.
And then once started some
form of deer management's going to need
to be maintained
for the foreseeable future. You just,
again, don't do it once
and walk away from it. So a
couple of take home messages... Deer
management can be complicated
particularly in communities with 
diverse stakeholder groups.
And success can only be attained by
integrating the ecological and the
social factors.
We know tons about deer biology
management how to effectively manage
deer.
But it's the social factors that are
important. It's getting people on board
with a program,
supporting a program. That's absolutely
critical.
Community-based management is also
critical for enhancing agency
credibility and building support for
management efforts.
And community-based management is not a
one-size-fits-all process.
Here locally in the Ithaca area in three
different communities we've got three
very different programs. And all can be
effective
or they may not be effective depending
how they're done. But
they have to be tailored on a community-
by-community basis depending on the
resources
and the capacity of local local groups.
I want to share a website. I'm going
to switch here,
try to switch out of this presentation
mode for a moment and share another
screen with you
for a community deer advisor website.
Okay, so I just want to just take a
minute or two and run through this
Community Deer Advisor website.
We put this together in collaboration
with the Nature Conservancy and Cornell
Cooperative Extension
just to provide community examples
and resources for folks that want to get
involved with this.
So first of all if you go to the
Community Examples section...
and the website is slow... there we go.
You can scroll down and we've got input
from communities that have been doing
this
from around the country. So again the
best way that folks can learn about
deer management in many cases is go to
another community.
See what somebody else has already done.
What can you
learn from things that people have
already done in the past?
And another important part of the
website that's really important
is the Resource Library. So if
we go there... We provide
a variety of resources for folks that
want to get started.
We've got central reading; a starter
kit; how to get involved;
community based guides that are resource
booklets;
survey tools, if you want to find out how
community residents feel;
basic info on deer ecology and impacts
of deer.
So these resources are out there and
available. What we tried to do is be as
comprehensive as
possible looking at community-based
deer management around
the United States. So okay this is the
last piece I want to share.
And this, I think this web link will be
put in the chat.
New York State Department of
Environmental Conservation has developed
a community-based
deer management guide to help folks in
New York
get started with community-based
deer management issues.
And this pdf is available free of charge.
And I just want to make folks aware that
that is a very, very helpful
guide on laws, regulations, policy,
what DEC's going to be looking for in
order to help communities get involved
with local deer management.
And with that on my presentation and
I'll stop sharing my screen and turn it
back over to you Lynn.
Okay, Paul so
later this morning we're going to have
breakout groups where
dealing, you know, how schools can
interact with the communities
with pests such as cockroaches and bed
bugs...
Based upon your community interaction
for deer
issues
what do you think that those breakout
groups should keep in mind?
I think those breakout groups should
keep in mind a lot of these
pests are best managed at
the community level.
What folks are going to need to do is
figure out how to engage how to educate
folks on
on a broad scale. You know, New York State
IPM is there to help.
Cornell Cooperative Extension is there
to help. There are a lot of folks that
can
help people through the process, but
you just need to figure out how to
engage folks that can be most helpful
for you.
Okay, thank you and thank you for your
presentation.
