Austin Amestoy: Welcome to The Big Why, a series from Montana Public Radio where we find out what we can discover together. I'm your host, Austin Amestoy. This is a show about listener-powered reporting. We'll answer questions, big or small, about anything under the Big Sky. By Montanans, for Montana, this is The Big Why.
Austin Amestoy: Reporter Edward O'Brien joins us today. Good to have to you back, Ed.
Edward O'Brien: Thanks! Always nice to get some studio time with you, Austin.
Austin Amestoy: Ed, this Big Why question asks about polarizing critters roaming our neighborhoods. They’re loved and appreciated by some, despised and considered a nuisance pest by others.
Edward O'Brien: Oh dear, yes. We’re talking about our urban deer population.
Listener Ann Karp wonders ‘what’s life like for an urban deer?’
Austin Amestoy: There’s certainly no shortage of front porch deer-watching opportunities around Missoula, but what prompted Ann to ask, Ed?
Edward O'Brien: Ann tells us that when she sees city deer — and it happens a lot — all these wonderful questions run through her mind.
Ann Karp: How's life? Are you liking life okay? Are you aware that you're living a really unusual life for a deer? I just got really curious because you can’t ask a deer how it’s feeling. So I thought I’d ask you guys and see if you had some insights.
Austin Amestoy: Fascinating questions. Who did you turn to get some answers, Ed?
Edward O'Brien: Ryan Klimstra was a great source of information.
Ryan Klimstra: So, I’m a wildlife biologist for Fish, Wildlife and Parks.
Edward O'Brien: Klimstra and his FWP colleagues handle all kinds of wildlife issues. One day they’re surveying wild game animals to fine tune hunting quotas, the next they might be consulting a homeowner on how to discourage a pesky northern flicker from pecking on their siding.
Austin Amestoy: You two took a field trip, right?
Edward O'Brien: Sort of! I don’t know about your neighborhood this summer, but mine was crawling with deer. There were plenty of handsome young bucks strutting around, and does carefully tending to their fawns.
I invited Klimstra over for an ‘urban safari’ of sorts.
Austin Amestoy: ‘Urban safari?’
Edward O'Brien: Stroll the `hood, hopefully see some whitetails, get in some good talk.
Edward O'Brien: Of course that particular day we didn’t see one single deer.
Still, it was a fascinating conversation. For example, I didn’t know deer were overhunted nearly to extinction in the late 1800s.
Ryan Klimstra: It wasn't until right around the turn of the century, in 1900, with the Lacey Act that prohibited market-hunting, that kind of turned things around and started the momentum to rebound deer populations.
Austin Amestoy: It’s tough to imagine deer were once nearly exterminated in the U.S..
Edward O'Brien: Isn’t that wild? From near extinction to an estimated population in the U.S over 30 million.
Austin Amestoy: So, Ann wanted to know about what life is like for our urban deer. Maybe let’s start with what draws them out of the wild into our neighborhoods?
Edward O'Brien: Think about it from a deer’s perspective: What’s not to love about the comfy-cozy suburban lifestyle; in this case meaning a never ending all-you-can-eat veggie buffet and relatively few predators.
What’s more, Klimstra tells us deer are incredibly adaptable. Get this: around this time of year microbes in their intestines start to assume new responsibilities.
Austin Amestoy: What do you mean?
Edward O'Brien: In the summer they’re capable of processing and digesting lush grass, shrubs, leaves, perhaps a few goodies they manage to poach from our gardens. But in the fall and winter …”
Ryan Klimstra: Their gut biome then allows them to nibble little twigs or even dry grass — things that just don’t have a lot of crude protein in them — but their gut biome helps them extract those things and digest them.
Austin Amestoy: What great lives deer in ‘burbs have. Any downsides?
Edward O'Brien: Our unrestrained dogs are a risk to them and especially their fawns. Obviously, cars present significant danger to them. According to State Farm Insurance data, Montanans hit wildlife on roads — mostly deer — at the second highest rate in the nation." Heck, I frequently see deer hobbling around on broken legs.
Ryan Klimstra: It might not look good to us, but three-legged deer are not that uncommon — or a deer with a broken leg. Typically, in a more wild setting, a predator would have a little bit easier time thinning those deer out. Here, we just have a front-row seat to seeing it.
Edward O'Brien: Klimstra adds that he and his colleagues, including local police officers, wind up euthanizing — killing — many deer who’ve been gravely injured by cars or got tangled up and terribly hurt in fencing. Sometimes the best alternative is to put them out of their agony as soon as possible.
Austin Amestoy: Ed, Ann Karp, our question asker, lives in Missoula. How big is the deer population there?
Edward O'Brien: We don’t know. There’s never been a census of city deer in Missoula. In years past, city council members just didn't think such a study would be worth the expense.
Recently however there’ve been rumblings about revisiting the idea, but nothing definite yet.
Austin Amestoy: Interesting. What’s moved the needle on those conversations?
Edward O'Brien: Chronic Wasting Disease.
Austin Amestoy: Ah, CWD. That’s the deadly illness that affects animals like deer, elk and moose, right?
Edward O'Brien: Correct. The symptoms are awful. They include dramatic weight loss, chronic listlessness and excessive thirst and urination. It’s a certain death sentence.
Libby’s deer population in northwest Montana is a cautionary tale for many communities ever since CWD was detected in a doe in 2019.
Neil Anderson: We found that about 13 percent of them in town had CWD.
Edward O'Brien: That’s Neil Anderson, the wildlife manager for Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks in northwest Montana. Anderson says Libby residents have long had a love-hate relationship with local deer. As in Missoula, there were differences of opinion on how to best handle them
Austin Amestoy: CWD changed that
Edward O'Brien: Yeah, it introduced a sobering reality check into the discussion. With the discovery of that infected doe five years ago, FWP shifted gears from occasionally euthanizing injured or older local deer, to more assertively reducing the local deer population. Overcrowded deer in an urban environment is a recipe for spreading CWD.
Neil Anderson: During the winter we hire some technicians. We have traps. We bait those traps. We trap deer. We euthanize them.
Edward O'Brien: The meat from those animals testing negative for CWD is donated to the local food bank. Animals testing positive go to the dump.
Austin Amestoy: Is the work paying off?
Edward O'Brien: Anderson says the prevalence of infected deer in Libby initially trended in the right direction. CWD rates decreased, but they appear to be creeping back up a little bit. Officials aren’t too alarmed, and are going to keep plugging away to reduce cases in and around Libby
Austin Amestoy: It seems that the goal isn’t eradicating CWD — that’s highly unlikely. The goal is limiting its spread?
Edward O'Brien: You got it. There’s a lot at stake and you can bet many other Montana communities are closely watching Libby’s response.
Austin Amestoy: Well Ed, the lives of those deer roaming our neighborhoods and serenely munching on our lawns are a little more complicated than I realized. How did this information go over with Ann Karp who asked our question for this week’s episode?
Edward O'Brien: Ann still wonders what these animals are feeling and thinking, so removed from their usual, more wild habitat. That’s a tough nut to crack, but I loved her response.
Ann Karp: I guess I'll just have to keep being curious and maybe make up my own stories for how they're feeling at any given point.
Austin Amestoy: Ed, thanks for all your reporting. Lemme know if you ever want to go on another ‘urban safari’, I might tag along!
Edward O'Brien: You bet, we’ll do that!
Austin Amestoy: Now we want to know what makes you curious about Montana — especially when it comes to this year’s election. Submit your questions below. Let's see what we can discover together!
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