Bountiful postpones deer management plan discussion

BOUNTIFUL — Discussion of a deer management plan for a herd that resides within city boundaries has been pulled from tonight's Bountiful City Council agenda.

The city has been working on a plan with the state Division of Wildlife Resources to cull a certain number of deer from the herd.

An agreement with the division had been part of the City Council's Tuesday night agenda, but will be worked on at a later date instead, said Phil Douglass, a conservation outreach manager for the Division of Wildlife Resources northern region.

The plan is still very preliminary and needs further approval from within the division and the Bountiful City Council, he said.

The management plan for the urban white-tailed deer involves a type of controlled hunt by wildlife officers in uniform on public property or private property with permission, said Tom Hardy, Bountiful city manager.

Arlo Wing, a landowner assistance specialist with DWR, told the council in January that the division received 102 deer complaints in 2006, 110 in 2007, 224 in 2008 and 149 in 2009. Complaint numbers for 2010 weren't available Monday.

During the January public hearing, residents complained about problems they have with deer, which damage plants and gardens, leave droppings in yards and are sometimes hit by cars.

Some residents said their gardens have been consumed by deer. Other residents said they're happy to share their gardens with deer.

In January, Wing told about 170 residents at City Hall that various options exist for dealing with the deer: doing nothing, allowing archers or sharpshooters to hunt deer in specific area, trapping and killing, trapping and relocating, fertility treatments or supplemental feeding.

"Some (options) are more palatable than others," Wing said.

Douglass said people are starting to understand that management of the deer population is necessary, because the deer are not from the migratory populations from the mountains.

"These are deer herds that have grown within the city," becoming a hazard, Douglass said. "So it's been the goal of the Division of Wildlife and Bountiful city to reduce those herds to a more tolerable level."

At the same time, Douglass said, the division is asking people to not only be tolerant of wildlife, but also to be tolerant of the division's efforts to manage wildlife.

In the wild, the division uses seasonal hunts to manage populations, something that wouldn't be safe or effective in urban or suburban areas.

Wildlife officers are skilled at culling a herd with a silenced .22-caliber rifle, Douglass said.

"We take great caution in carrying these kinds of operations out," he said.

It's not a new technique to Utah or to the U.S., he said. And it's not the first time the process has been used in Bountiful.

Hardy said the division has culled the herd in Bountiful three or four times in the 30 years he's been city manager, the most recent of which was about 15 years ago.

"They did it very professionally," he said.

e-mail: jdougherty@desnews.com

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