Hobby hunters do not help forest transformation

Prof. Josef H. Reichholf explains why shooting more roe deer saves neither the forest nor the climate. Recreational hunting keeps populations highly productive.

Editorial team Wild beim Wild — 18 October 2020

The debate about forest transformation and calls for even more intensive hunting of roe deer and red deer flares up time and again.

But is shooting even more of these highly reproductive wild animals really the solution? Renowned zoologist and ecologist Prof. Josef H. Reichholf says no: neither the forest nor the climate will be saved that way.

Forest transformation is necessary — forests need to become climate-resilient. But roe deer browse on young trees, preventing the shift to new woodland. So the argument goes: even more must be shot than before, until new forests can regenerate on their own. The Bund Naturschutz in Bavaria, the Ecological Hunting Association, and forest owners recently called for exactly this in a press release.

The idea sounds plausible. On closer inspection, however, it is not. Roe deer have already been hunted very intensively for decades — and hunting figures show a rising trend. Yet this apparently did little to help natural regeneration in the forests. Why? A brief look at the roe deer itself and its way of life is instructive.

»Sustained high hunting pressure of around one million roe deer shot per year in Germany has not regulated the population to the desired level — instead, it has kept it highly productive at a high level«.
Prof. Josef H. Reichholf

In other words: the more roe deer or red deer are shot, the more rapidly they reproduce.

By nature, the roe deer is not a woodland animal. It is well known that does give birth to their fawns not in the protective cover of dense forest, but out in the open countryside — preferably in meadows. Unfortunately, this means they are all too easily maimed by mowing machines. Before that, in spring, we see roe deer out in the fields — entirely in the open. Where they are not hunted or only lightly so, they would spend the rest of the year in the open fields as well. From autumn onwards they form groups, which hunters call “leaps.”

Roe deer are by nature inhabitants of meadows and woodland edges. It is the hunting by hobby hunters that drives the animals into the forest, where they cannot find the grasses and herbs that are vital to them, leaving them no choice but to nibble on buds. Hunting needlessly disturbs wildlife, which often further increases their nutritional needs and thus the browsing damage.

Apart from springtime, however, roe deer make themselves nearly invisible. They wait until late into the night before venturing out onto the fields. Intensive hunting has made roe deer very timid. Only the most cautious individuals survive, and young deer model their behavior accordingly. The result: roe deer have been virtually pushed into the forests. They must obtain a large part of their daily food there, and in doing so they also browse the buds of young trees – in fact preferentially so, since these contain the nutrients roe deer need in favorable concentrations. Roe deer are selective feeders. Given their slender build and small stomachs, they have no choice but to be.

When they eat young, protein-rich shoots of grasses out in the fields, this causes no damage. Because grasses grow “from the bottom up” – not from the top, from the tips, as trees do. Tree growth originates from the buds. Farmers know this well. They have always practiced it: grass can be mowed, often even repeatedly. Young tree growth cannot.

The open field is therefore a far more suitable habitat for roe deer than the forest. Yet more hunting forces them further into the forest – and thereby increases browsing damage.

The roe deer population in Germany is large and productive. Culling barely keeps pace with the annual increase, despite the greatest efforts – because growing wariness makes roe deer ever harder to hunt.

Roe deer are actually thriving in the cultivated landscape. The generally intensive use of fertilizers has made the plants they feed on more nutritious. This is reflected in the frequency of twin births. Intensive hunting keeps the roe deer population at a high level. It has led into a dead end from which there is no escape by going even further down that path. On the contrary. Browsing damage continues to increase until the roe deer are nearly eradicated. Because the shyness imposed on them prevents them from living largely in the open as their nature dictates. If they were allowed to do so, this would not only benefit natural regeneration in the forest on its own, but the frequency of wildlife accidents would also decrease. Roe deer that do not have to cross roads in the dead of night will not end up under the wheels either. They can learn to adapt to road traffic. Which would surely not be a bad thing. Because the collisions — fatal for the vast majority of roe deer but causingonly bodywork damageto the vehicles — come with very high costs. Without personal injury, repairs to vehicles amount to several thousand euros each time. And this with around 200’000 roe deer accidents per year. That means annual damages running into the tens of millions.

There would be a further advantage: roe deer would become visible again. If they were not so shy, it would be far easier to determine how large the populations actually are. And how they are distributed. Browsing damage is not a good indicator of this. It relates purely to silviculture. Some tree species would not establish themselves in the forests in question because they would not naturally occur there at all. Such as Douglas firs planted in state forests, or spruce trees in the riparian woodland along the Alz, in a nature reserve subject to more or less regular flooding.

It should also be noted that the intensive management of state forests over recent years has encouraged the mass spread of Himalayan balsam, which prevents natural regeneration of the desired forest trees from taking hold. Roe deer are certainly not to blame for this. Nor are they responsible for the fact that spruce trees were previously planted on a large scale in areas where beech or mixed deciduous forest would naturally occur.

The mistakes of forestry cannot be blamed on the roe deer. Nor on society, which is once again expected to foot the bill. People — many people — would also like to encounter roe deer that don't bolt away in sheer panic or cause a dangerous emergency stop on the road at night. Neither the forest nor the climate will be saved by further intensifying the shooting of roe deer.

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