The Churchill Borough Deer Committee currently has four members:
Barry Kisloff, Sue Weigel, Cathy Bordner and Sandra Fox.
The committee looks forward to sharing research and information about deer with the Churchill community.
There are a number of reasons the committee supposed residents may be concerned about the abundance of deer. As a committee, we discussed the following and came up with common-sense recommendations for addressing these concerns.
Public education is a critical component of resolving any wildlife-human conflict. As such, we make the following broad recommendations:
Finally, the issue with deer in our community is ultimately a people issue. The cultural carrying capacity is the abundance or density of deer a community is willing to tolerate. In Churchill, this is a far more important metric than the actual abundance or the ecological carrying capacity (the number of deer the available habitat can support). Without knowing if there is a consensus among Churchill residents on whether deer are a major concern and what an acceptable abundance of deer is, it is impossible to establish a sound deer management program or even set deer population goals that will be acceptable for residents. Hence, the first step in most established and successful deer management programs—even before assessing the deer population—is to survey residents. We acknowledge the difficulty in collecting survey information. However, without broad data on resident opinions a management program will be unlikely to meet the borough’s needs, and at worst will waste valuable borough resources.
