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A sign of opposition to the city of Ann Arbor's deer cull plans at the entrance to Bird Hills Nature Area on Aug. 26, 2016.

(Ryan Stanton | The Ann Arbor News)

ANN ARBOR, MI - Following a controversial inaugural deer cull last winter, Ann Arbor officials are planning to take a combination approach this coming year, using both lethal and nonlethal methods to control the deer population.

City Administrator Howard Lazarus laid out the city's 2017 deer management strategy in an eight-page memo to the City Council on Friday, Oct. 14, indicating the goal is to kill 100 more deer using firearms this winter.

Additionally, the city hopes to sterilize between 40 and 60 deer if practical and cost effective, the memo indicates.

A sign of opposition to the city of Ann Arbor's deer cull plans at the entrance to the Kuebler Langford Nature Area on Aug. 26, 2016.

Sharpshooters hired by the city

killed 63 deer

in 14 city parks and nature areas during the city's first annual cull in January and February. The cull proved to be hugely controversial, prompting several protests and lawsuits against the city, while the Humane Society of Huron Valley launched a "Stop the Shoot" campaign visible in the form of yard signs dotting lawns around the city.

The city hopes to coordinate with the University of Michigan to increase the available locations for both lethal and nonlethal aspects of the winter 2017 deer management plan.

"Staff's intent with this plan is to be as inclusive and transparent as possible in the hope that a community-supported plan is developed and implemented," Lazarus wrote. "Inclusiveness is being sought by actively engaging with self-organized citizen groups, both for and against last year's program, as well as reaching out to the Humane Society of Huron Valley to request its participation."

Lazarus said citizens will be able to track the status and development of the plan at www.a2gov.org/deermanagement.

"Full consensus on a plan is unlikely and should not be expected; however, increased awareness and acceptance of the plan is desired," he wrote.

The plan calls for seeking City Council approval by Nov. 14 and moving forward with both a cull and sterilization effort starting Jan. 1.

Minimizing long-term culling

The city solicited a proposal from White Buffalo Inc., a nonprofit organization that has conducted deer fertility control research in other communities, to determine whether a combination lethal/nonlethal program could be implemented together this winter. A recommended vendor agreement, along with changes to city ordinance related to discharging firearms in public places, is expected go to the City Council for approval soon. The first reading and initial approval of the ordinance changes is expected Monday night. Oct. 17.

"For clarification, the proposal that would come with the vendor recommendation is not the same as the implementation plan," Lazarus wrote. "The proposal is a higher-level plan without specifics. The implementation plan would be developed along with the vendor after council approval."

White Buffalo Inc. states on its website that management of deer populations conventionally has focused on lethal removal measures such as sharpshooting or hunting, but in an increasing number of communities those strategies have become impractical for legal, safety and ethical reasons.

"The impracticality of implementing lethal strategies has fostered interest in alternatives, including contraception and surgical sterilization," the website states. "Surgery is currently the only reliable means to permanently sterilize female deer and has been demonstrated to be safe for the treated animals.

"Sterilization may provide an alternative deer management technique for reducing suburban herds in communities willing to commit to a long-term effort, and where lethal deer removal is impractical. Surgical sterilization is scale limited based on the ability to capture and sterilize 80% or more of the female deer in a population, and maintain that level each field season.

"Overall success will be greatest for areas where the effects of immigration are minimized. White Buffalo Inc. has trained local volunteers to handle immobilized deer and veterinarians to conducted the surgical procedure. We have documented a 50% decrease in cost with volunteer involvement."

In a Sept. 25 proposal submitted to the city, White Buffalo Inc. founder and president Anthony DeNicola wrote, "In a community like Ann Arbor, with a diverse development pattern, we would recommend combining methods across the community; nonlethal methods in the more densely developed areas and sharpshooting in larger undeveloped tracts. This approach should accelerate the rate of population decline, and then minimize long-term culling."

He went on to acknowledge, "To date, there are very few data on the empirical benefits of this proposed strategy. This research proposes to examine the benefits of sharpshooting and surgical sterilization in managing Ann Arbor's burgeoning deer population over a 5-year period."

The report concluded Ann Arbor is a suitable place to conduct a combined sharpshooting/sterilization research project, using sharpshooting methods in larger undeveloped properties and surgical sterilization in areas where firearm discharge constraints prevent sharpshooting methods.

"The areas of particular concern, given the abundance of deer and density of housing ... are: 1) the area bounded by the Huron River to the northeast, the University of Michigan Arboretum to the northwest, Washtenaw Avenue to the southwest, Huron Parkway to the east, and 2) the area bounded by Skydale Drive to the north, Route 23 and the Huron River to the west and south, and Black Pond Woods Nature Area, Murfin Avenue/Upland Drive to the east," it states.

The proposal from White Buffalo Inc. shows an estimated budget of $55,720 for shooting 100 deer, and an estimated budget of $77,050 for capturing and sterilizing 40-60 deer, plus another $10,840 for site visit, planning and permitting, and $10,330 for monitoring efforts.

Other efforts to address issue

In his memo, Lazarus also mentions plans for an educational program and public right-of-way improvements, including added deer signage, as well as possible changes to the city's fencing ordinance to help residents dealing with deer.

He has set a target date of March 15 for developing an educational program for residents, with a goal of increasing community awareness about deer and offering options to manage potential deer impacts on private property.

The plan also calls for establishing a baseline for measuring the vegetative impact of deer in the city's natural areas and establishing an ecological goal.

The city intends to measure community acceptance of the program, with a goal of having 75 percent of surveyed residents in a ward respond that damage to their private landscape or garden plants is at an acceptable level, and a separate goal of having 75 percent of surveyed residents in a ward respond that the city's strategy of managing the deer population is acceptable.

Recognizing there will be variability of those measures over time, a trend toward 75 percent is desired, Lazarus said.

City staff members assigned to the project include Safety Manager Steve Schantz, who is leading the lethal program, Community Services Administrator Derek Delacourt, who is leading the nonlethal and educational programs, and Chief Financial Officer Tom Crawford, the project coordinator.

Funding for the winter 2017 program already is approved. The City Council included $145,000 for deer management in the city's 2016-17 budget.

"Staff will have a budget for use of the funds developed prior to implementation, which will be shared with council," Lazarus wrote in his memo. "If additional funding is being sought, it is anticipated to be required at contract approval."

The city hopes to obtain a permit from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources by the end of November, after which an implementation plan will be shared with the public before deer management activities begin.

To ensure the program is carried out as safely as possible, Lazarus said some logistics of the operation will not be shared publicly until after execution of the plan is completed.

During the first cull, the city declined to disclose specifically when and where the hired sharpshooters would be stationed on any given day or night, instead issuing a blanket closure of 14 parks and nature areas from 4 p.m. to 7 a.m. on weekdays for the months of January and February. That was, in part, meant to keep cull opponents from trying to disrupt cull activities, as emotions were high and there were ongoing protests and demonstrations against the cull.

A small handful of cull opponents have continued to make appearances at City Council meetings.

Looking forward to the remaining three years of the four-year deer management plan authorized by the City Council last year, Lazarus said the city staff anticipates implementing a number of strategies and lessons learned so far, including reducing the amount of time parks are closed, but also expanding the number of parcels of public land that can be used for culling. Specific details about those aspects haven't been released yet.

The city's stated goal is to reduce the deer population in order to reduce negative deer-human interactions, such as complaints about damage to gardens and landscaping, and to support biological diversity in nature areas.

During a Feb. 18 helicopter flyover, city staff counted 202 deer in areas in and around the city -- up from 168 in March 2015.

The city emphasizes the count results are not intended to be a comprehensive census of the entire deer population, but rather a number that gives some insight into the minimum deer population in certain areas at one point in time.

Michigan State Police data reported through MichiganTrafficCrashFacts.org shows there were 535 deer-involved traffic crashes in Ann Arbor over the last 12 years, with a spike last year, going from 51 in 2014 to 90 in 2015, while the total yearly crash count in the city ticked down from 3,827 to 3,530.