SOUTHWEST HARBOR, Maine — Some people in Southwest Harbor are concerned about the implications of a large deer population and the possibility that some residents and visitors might be feeding the deer.
Worries about the deer herds on Mount Desert Island aren’t new. Deer haven’t been hunted on the island since the 1930s except when a “nuisance” deer situation has been declared. Now, though, the Southwest Harbor select board is considering what it can do — if anything — to help decrease the number of vehicle crashes involving deer. It’s also considering how to potentially decrease the amount of property damage deer might cause as well as Lyme disease cases on MDI.
In the 1980s, Bar Harbor became the first place in Maine where a deer tick was found. There can be up to 100 ticks on a single deer at any given time. Deer ticks are successful in broadleaf forest. Because of the fire of 1947, MDI has large tracts of broadleaf woods creating that habitat.
At its Dec. 10 meeting, the select board members discussed a potential ordinance related to people feeding deer in Southwest Harbor and how the problem is a bit bigger than the one town.
Discussions touched on the historical fluctuation of deer populations on the island, the impacts of overpopulation and potential solutions such as hunting and contraception. The board decided not to take action on the ordinance at this time, but to continue exploring options.
“We haven’t really studied this very much,” James Vallette, select board member, said. “We haven’t worked with it as wildlife management experts, with the community who participates and enjoys the deer. There are a lot of people who do feed the deer and it’s part of their life; it’s part of what they do every day. I would like to have a process that allows some discussion of the bigger picture of the deer population on the island … and pathways for maintaining a sustainable year-round population.”
Vallette worried that the ordinance was singling out just people who feed the deer and also that it was attempting to create a solution without a full understanding of all the factors involved.
Some members of the public present explained what they saw as an urgent need.
“Everybody goes to Seawall,” one resident said. “You can count 50 deer any morning from my garden center to the picnic area. They’re not starving. They’re being fed. They’re eating my plants in the garden center. So I’m protecting them now with deer sprays.”
There’s nothing the deer won’t eat, he said. There had been successful thinning in the past, he said, citing historical records from the 1800s to 2013. The College of the Atlantic has a 2013 report on that history online.
“Those who settled Mount Desert Island created a landscape of small farms and industries much like the rest of New England,” the authors wrote. Forty-seven percent “of the Island’s acreage was classified as ‘improved’ in government records, meaning it had been put to human use and not left as forest. In many ways, this creation of a landscape of ‘edges’ (transition zones between different landscape features) was the beginning of a long history of human/deer interaction, as the improvements humans made to the land created ideal habitat for deer.”
Back in 2013, a task force studied how Lyme disease had increased on Mount Desert Island by a factor of four since 2006. Similarly, there was a doubling of deer and vehicle accidents compared to numbers in the early 2000s and 1990s.
At the time, the task force chairman, Robert Kelley, reported that 20 percent of all accidents on MDI involved deer. Those events aren’t contained to any town or Acadia National Park. Back in 2013 to 2014, the task force studied data and hunting methods. The park bans hunting. The goal had been to create a phased hunting proposal to reduce the herd population to a density of 10 to 15 every square mile.
Discussions about potentially thinning down the herd brought standing room only crowds to the Bar Harbor Town Council Chambers.
Acadia National Park sits on approximately half of Bar Harbor’s land mass and extends well into other portions of Mount Desert Island. When deer tend to have negative pressures in one area, they move to another.
According to state statute, “A person may not place salt or any other bait or food in a place to entice deer to that place from [June 1] to the start of an open hunting season on deer and, if all open hunting seasons on deer are closed before [Dec. 15] for that year, from the close of the last open hunting season on deer to [Dec. 15.]”
Throughout New England and the northeastern U.S., different states have different rules about feeding deer. Some have bans. Some have partial or timed bans. Some simply discourage it.
In a 2020 report to the 129th Maine legislature, wildlife biologist Nathan R. Bieber wrote, “The extent to which deer are fed in Maine is not fully known, but Maine’s deer feeding culture appears to be more extensive than what’s seen in other Northeastern states, perhaps owing to relatively severe winters.”
State data show that deer-vehicle accidents don’t seem to be increasing much anywhere on Mount Desert Island other than in Tremont. Tremont has had 15 crashes with deer involved this year, up from seven last year. It had six in 2013. The total numbers of crashes in each year — whether or not deer were involved — were 15 in 2013, 16 in 2023, and 20 so far in 2024.
This story was originally published by The Bar Harbor Story. To receive regular coverage from the Bar Harbor Story, sign up for a free subscription here.
