Assessment of a 15-year white-tailed deer management program and woody recovery in a suburban forest preserve

The authors likely need at least another decade of monitoring in parks currently managing deer before successful recruitment can be observed across much of the study area.

“However, we likely need at least another decade of monitoring in the parks currently managing deer before successful recruitment of this nature can be observed across much of the study area (Nagy et al., 2022;Tanentzap et al., 2011).”

The lag in regeneration response in parks managing deer for over a decade may be partly due to deer density targets being too high and/or because sufficient regeneration response requires over 15 years of continual management.

“This may be partially due to target deer densities that are too high (e.g., VAFO's initial density target was 11.5-13.5 deer per square kilometer) and/or to the fact that it takes over 15 years of continual management to achieve a sufficient regeneration response (Nagy et al., 2022).”