Deer are eating the crops of local farms. Farm owners are asking wildlife managers to increase the bag limits for deer in the state park adjacent to their farms. Bag limits are the number of deer hunters can kill per season. What environmental factors should wildlife manager investigate before making a decision?

Question

kittybasil · Answer

Any answer choices before we start discussing this?

dman · Answer

nah

kittybasil · Answer

Quote:

The wildlife manager needs to think about all parts of the food chain that deer are present in. For instance, say that the deer in an area are keeping control of an invasive plant species. If too many deer are killed, that invasive plant species may run out of control and invade new areas in which it destroys crops or gardens. What impact do the deer have on their environment? Do other species rely on deer to stay alive (predators, symbionts, etc.)? Are these species beneficial and would they be destroyed if the deer population was decreased significantly? Would other harmful species take over the area if the deer were gone? Also, and perhaps most importantly, the wildlife manager needs to be sure that not too many deer are being killed. He or she should have a pretty accurate idea of what the deer population is to prevent over-hunting and thus the complete demise of the deer population. There are also other options to prevent deer from eating crops. Fences can be put up around crops and don't require killing anything.

source

kittybasil · Answer

Here's another one:

Quote:

There are 2 main questions that influences into the decision of the government wildlife management: 1) Has the population of the deer increase beyond the eco-system's ability to support them? 2) Are there political pressures to increase or not increase the bag limit for hunters? Just because some deer have stray out of the state park does not mean there is an over population of deer, although it could. Animals like deer are kind of lazy in that if they find easy access food they don't move away from the area until it's all gone; they don't conserve food or pace themselves, but gorge themselves. That's why if you compare wildgames and their farm raised cousins, the ones raised on farms are always fatter because they are very easy to fatten - just keep feeding them.

Same source.

kittybasil · Answer

Let me know if you run into any issues 🙂