The Deer Dilemma: Balancing Beauty and Bother in Rewilding

You’re out in the wild, stepping lightly on a carpet of leaves, and suddenly, there it is - a splendidly beautiful deer, crowned with majestic antlers and looking as if it just stepped out from the pages of a fairy-tale. Does it get any better?

Here at the Grange Project, our eyes on the ground are trail cameras. Lately, they've been capturing more than just the random bird and occasional badger. Deer are hogging the limelight, popping up again and again on our screens.

Now, don’t get me wrong. Deer are amazing creatures. Seeing them up close, you can’t help but admire their elegance. But our cameras picking up more deer than any other creature got us thinking and digging a bit deeper. It turns out; we've got a tricky problem on our hands, one we're calling the 'Deer Dilemma.'

Let us explain. In a perfect world, deer would live happily alongside other creatures, each playing their part in the circle of life. However without any apex predators around (we’re talking bears and wolves), there numbers can multiply like crazy. Imagine you're at a party with a buffet full of treats, but there's no one to tell you when to stop snacking. You might just eat all the crisps, right? Well, without wolves and bears, deer can be like party-goers with unlimited access to the buffet - in this case, the 'buffet' being the tender, young shoots of saplings that are trying to grow into trees.

When the deer munch on all these young plants, they stop new forests from growing - not ideal when you're trying to rewild an area. And that's just the half of it. When plant diversity drops because of the deer's overeating, other species that rely on these plants can struggle.

So what do we do? Banish all deer from the land? Nope, that's not the way. Deer belong here just as much as any other creature. But we need to find a balance.

Some suggest culling, but that's a bit controversial. Firstly, it can backfire. The remaining deer, finding themselves with plenty of food and no competition, might start having babies faster than before, and we're back to square one. However on the other side of the argument, wild venison is both a sustainable and healthy source of meat.

Protective gear for saplings or inviting a few predators back to keep deer numbers down might be other ways forward. But these can be big moves, and it's a bit like walking on eggshells - we need to get it right, or it could mess up other parts of the ecosystem.

In a nutshell, our Deer Dilemma is a bit of a head-scratcher. Each rewilding project has to suss out its own way of dealing with it. What our deer-populated camera reels really tell us is that we've got to keep learning and adapting (and we’re hoping the friendly ecologist we appoint to help us with the project can support us here!)

Fundamentally, every problem we tackle gets us closer to figuring out how to live in sync with our world and all its incredible creatures. The deer might be a bit of a bother, but they're also an opportunity to dive deeper into the natural world and find ways to make rewilding work for everyone.