Drought Sends Animals Out of Woods, Onto Roads

DEER-VEHICLE COLLISIONS

Drought Sends Animals Out of Woods, Onto Roads

Deer-vehicle collisions have risen the past few years in urban areas of Montgomery County, and this summer's drought may be sending more deer into the roads.

"I mean, even the weeds are hurting. Things are really tough out there for wildlife," said Chuck Schuster, agricultural education extension coordinator for the Maryland Cooperative Extension office in Derwood.

In addition, deer are often finding neighborhoods to be better homes than woodlands.

"In a lot of ways, a suburban area is probably a better habitat for deer. It provides them better food than a natural forest area," said Rob Gibbs, natural resources manager for the Montgomery Department of Parks. "Deer are really creatures of forest edge. We make a lot of forest edge when we develop suburbia."

Residents in down-county areas such as Takoma Park, who rarely reported deer problems 10 years ago, are now regularly calling authorities, Gibbs said. Concerns about deer accidents, crop browsing, and destruction of home landscaping and other vegetation used to center primarily in rural areas.

Upper Montgomery, "which has had a lot of deer for quite a while," has seen deer population remain the same, Gibbs said, due in part to managed hunts, contraception and other population-management techniques.

A county report shows that deer-vehicle collisions, which spiked from 1994 to 2002, declined slightly over the past four years. But crashes involving deer in urban areas increased over the same period.

-- PATRICIA M. MURRET, Gazette Staff Writer