The Amherst Deer Problem: Nature and Society in the Suburbs, or, "NIMBY Meets Bambi"

David M. Mark and
Steven Parkansky

Left: A dead deer on Niagara Falls Boulevard, US Highway 62
Since 1995, Steven Parkansky (Ph.D. candidate) and David Mark have been assisting the Town of Amherst with its deer "problem". Amherst is an afluent Buffalo suburb with a population of about 130,000 people and about 1,100 White-tailed Deer. There is no legal hunting in the Town, which has experienced a great deal of development and population growth over the last couple of decades. Recently, the press has identified "the Amherst Deer Problem". The problem, as reported, seems to have begun as a deer damage to indivdual and commercial gardens, but quickly switched to a focus on deer- related vehicle accidents (DRVAs). In 1996, there were over 500 DRVAs reported to the police, almost 10 percent of all the vehicle collisions reported to the Amherst police.

Parkansky has obtained deer population survey data from the NY state Department of Environment and Conservation, DRVA data from the Amherst police, deer warning sign data from the Amherst highways department, and deer carcass locations from the contractor who picks up road-killed deer for disposal. All of these data were digitized or geocoded, integrated in ARC/INFO, and moved to ArcView. Biogeography students also rpepared a detailed land cover map from air photos, and that too was integrated into the GIS. Parkansky has presented the results to the Town Board. In April 1997, the Town Supervisor ("mayor") invited Mark to serve on the "Deer Management Task Force", which has been charged with advising the town of deer population targets and means of reducing numbers if necessary. One meeting of the Task Force was held in UB's Geographic Information and Analysis, and was atended by the Supervisor, as well as by two members of the Information Systems department of the town. The politicians and other task force members seemed to be surprised by many aspects of their own organizations' data, when shown in a geographic context. "At least now we know there really is a deer problem" said one task force member.

Parkansky's dissertation will model deer population distributions, then use that output plus traffic and road data to model deer-vehicle collisions. He has also mailed out a questionnaire to 1200 residents, asking questions about the nature of the deer problem, their personal experiences with and losses due to White-tailed Deer in Amherst, and their attitudes toward various prevention or mitigation solutions.