Mary DiBiase Blaich for The New York Times Staring across Staten Island’s South Shore Expressway, the buck struck a pose in the late light of an autumn day, antlers burnished like new bronze. His muddy feet described his journey from Old Place Creek, just below the road’s shoulder, to a spot where he no doubt anticipated a better view, but instead found one of New York City’s busiest highways. The deer’s intent gaze was troubling. Suddenly driving 50 miles an hour seemed much too fast, and the road’s shoulder, much too narrow.
Few animals provoke such strong sentiments as white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus). They thrill animal lovers, delight children and Disney fans, frighten drivers, frustrate park managers and enrage gardeners. Perhaps it is simply their size that doesn’t fit comfortably into our human-centric concept of a city (an average whitetail stands about three feet tall at the shoulder, males average 200 pounds, females about 150). Their increasing ease around humans has earned them a welcome usually reserved for pigeons, gulls, raccoons and squirrels.
Because of hunting pressure and the transformation of woodlands into farms, deer were rare throughout the Northeast for much of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Abandoned farms returning to woodland, and the reduced harvest of whitetails by hunters partly account for some of the population’s increase, but do little to explain how and why they have returned to the fast life of New York City these last several decades.
Whitetails can now be found with regularity on Staten Island and in the Bronx and eastern Queens. They have made inroads into Manhattan at Inwood Park, and one audacious deer was rescued after swimming to Brooklyn under the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge. No city, state or federal agency has undertaken reintroduction of deer; the animals have simply followed their instincts and their hunger back into a New York City their ancestors had abandoned. Whitetails are excellent swimmers, and perhaps following the wooded corridors of our many parkways, or swimming across tidal rivers and bays, they re-established themselves into a greatly changed ecosystem.
The city’s milder winters, new parks, trees and shrubs, and utter lack of predators for whitetails â€" outside of the modern automobile â€" suit them nicely.
In some ways, deer are the gold standard of success in the preservation of New York City’s wild spaces, but deer also represent a real threat to the city’s valuable, and often isolated, habitats. Walking through what are sometimes called “deer savannahs†can be disturbing. Over-browsing eventually leaves only mature trees and a few unpalatable species from the ground up to six or seven feet â€" the height of a deer standing on its back legs. This impact can already be observed in areas of southern Staten Island, where even the ferns (last-chance food for deer) are nibbled to stumps and future trees are devoured as five-inch seedlings.
Deer upset their own environment through overpopulation, rendering it unsuitable for other species, and eventually, even for themselves.
