The Columbus City Council and Department of Neighborhoods will be hosting a community conversation about different deer management approaches at the Whetstone Community Center at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday.
The city launched a community survey this past summer to better understand Columbus residents’ views about deer in their neighborhoods and gather feedback about potential deer management strategies.
A survey findings summary was created by students at Ohio State's College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences in order to synthesize the results for city officials and residents.
A total of 3,151 responses were included in the analysis, with 2,166 responses coming from the Clintonville neighborhood. The responses revealed a strong outlier among those who were surveyed.
Jacob Dilley, a legislative aid for Columbus City Councilmember Nancy Day-Achauer, chair of the Neighborhoods, Recreation and Parks Committee, said the survey was prompted by an increase in deer-related complaints made to the city’s 311 public service number. The complaints were transferred to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Day-Achauer’s office was approached by the agency around a year ago.
Of the Clintonville respondents, 80% reported an increase in the deer population in their neighborhood, with 72% of Clintonville respondents reporting damage caused by deer in the past three years. Issues included property damage, deer-involved vehicle incidents and injury. About 28% of Clintonville respondents who reported property-related costs indicated expenses of $1,000 or more, including about 6% of respondents who reported costs exceeding $5,000.
About 63% of Clintonville residents reported seeing deer daily, compared to 26% of residents outside the Clintonville area.
Across Columbus, around 70% of respondents said they would like to see the deer population decrease. Nearly 40% of respondents said they enjoy seeing a few deer, but worry about the problems they cause.
Reduction approaches in the survey include a no feeding ordinance, birth control, sterilization, professional targeted removal and permitted hunting. The survey recorded broad support for non-lethal approaches to deer control, with 63% of respondents city wide expressing strong support for a no feed ordinance. Of the remaining options, 37% of respondents strongly supported sterilization, 31% strongly supported birth control, 35% strongly supported professional targeted removal and 42% strongly supported controlled archery, also referred to as professional hunting.
Dilley said Wednesday’s meeting will be a discussion table format featuring expert facilitators from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Metroparks and Columbus City Council. The conversation will be focused on deer management.
Officials plan to mainly discuss the options of no feed ordinances, professional culling management options and an archery permitting program. Dilley said they want to see the comfortability of residents with different programs and discuss what the programs may look like in practice.
Dilley said sterilization and birth control are high cost programs, and the city will likely not pursue those options. As of now, Dilley said no specific policies on deer control have been developed, and the meeting will help inform those budding policy discussions.
