Becoming killable: white-tailed deer management and the production of overabundance in the Blue Hills

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the implementation of a white-tailed deer management program in the Blue Hills Reservation outside of Boston, Massachusetts. Drawing on the concepts of biopolitics, we explore how white-tailed deer became an object of concern and ultimately targets of lethal management in this suburban park. Through interviews, document analysis, and observation of public meetings, we examine the changes in and controversy over the presence, perception, and management of deer in the park. We argue that the implementation of the deer management program is only partially explained by the growing numbers of white-tailed deer, and must also be understood in the context of concerns about human health and shifting imaginaries of urban green spaces and global biodiversity. The case illustrates the entanglements of harm and care in the management sub/urban ecosystems and highlights how differences in the ethical and ontological understandings of deer create tensions in efforts to advance multispecies urban planning.

KEYWORDS:

• Biopolitics
• conservation biology
• white-tailed deer
• more-than-human geography
• novel ecosystems

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our incredible gratitude to the many interviewees that spoke with us and the staff at MassWildlife and DCR, particularly in the DCR Archives office. We indebted to the audience members and participants at the Washington, DC. And New Orleans, and Boston AAGs for their feedback on earlier versions of this work. We thank Leesa Fawcett and Erin Luther, who provided inciteful feedback on an earlier draft of this manuscript, and the three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments that improved the final version of this article. Finally, we appreciate the leadership of Sue Ruddick and Bronwyn Clement in coordinating this special issue. All errors are our own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Reservation here refers to the name of the conservation area, and should not be confused with other common uses of the term.

2. Although the Massachusett Tribe is not federally recognized, members of the tribe maintain a Tribal Council and preserve cultural practices. The Massachusett Tribe were not involved in the initial planning of the BHR hunt, and some members attended protests against the hunt, seeking inclusion in the planning process.

3. The Trustees of Reservations is a nonprofit conservation organization in Massachusetts that is the first land conservation nonprofit in the United States.

4. All names of interviewees have been changed here.

5. The 2015 Blue Hills Deer Management Plan states: “The decision to manage the overpopulation of deer in the Blue Hills Reservation is not dependent upon perceptions regarding the role of deer in relation to Lyme disease or other tick-borne illnesses” (DCR & DFW 2015).

6. Lyme disease is transmitted to humans in the eastern US by Ixodes scapularis, commonly known as deer ticks. Deer are not good reservoirs for Lyme disease, but play a role in the reproduction of adult deer ticks. Some propose deer reduction as a Lyme management strategy, but others suggest deer populations may have little impact on the transmission of Lyme (Levi et al., 2012; Wilson et al., 1984).

7. Vegetation surveys examine the presence of different vegetation species and signs of browse on these species, which is used to assess the impact of deer on the forest ecosystem.

8. Compassionate conservation offers a vision of conservation where concern for the welfare of individual animals is the primary tenet of conservation rather than the welfare of ecosystems.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [1832191].