A group of Ball State biologists who have been studying fawns in and around Bloomington for the past two years say young deer are less stressed in town than they are in a rural setting.
Ball State Professor Tim Carter, who presented the group's findings on Monday evening at City Hall, says not only do Bloomington's urban fawns have a significantly lower mortality rate compared with their country counterparts, they're happier, too.
"Fawns in town are less stressed out than fawns out of town," Carter says, "and that has serious implications for survival, reproduction, things of that nature."
Carter says the data indicates its possible for Bloomington's already sizable herd to grow. While the deer herd is manageable now, Carter says if it were to grow more the situation could become problematic.
"It gets into a very, very, very ugly phase, where it becomes extremely unpleasant to have the deer around, both from a homeowner standpoint, and from a deer standpoint," he says. "We're talking about starvation, and we really don't want to get to that point."
That's where the upcoming phase two of the research comes in.
The second part of the project, nicknamed "Deer 2.0," involves tracking the behaviors of Bloomington's adult deer using computerized collars. This phase is expected to take an additional two years.
Councilman Dave Rollo says while similar scientific studies have been conducted at the Griffy Lake Preserve, there haven't been any done within city limits.
"What we're lacking in the urban situation is that kind of science and evidence," he says. "This is tailor-made for it, it's perfect."
Rollo says the data will help the city best determine the best way to deal with Bloomington's substantial urban deer herd.
For example, if the same deer stay inside city limits (what Rollo calls a "closed system") the most practical means of population control would involve a non-lethal approach, such as sterilization.
But Rollo says the deer have to be in a closed system. If different deer are flowing in and out of city limits, a lethal approach might be more tenable.
"How can we keep that population stable or decreasing? That's what [the study's] going to tell us," Rollo says.
