Big Meadows, around mile 51 on the Skyline Drive in the Shenandoah National Park, is a very good habitat - unique in the park, we are told - with a population of healthy happy deer.

Deer thrive there because of the prevalence of edge mosaic - alternating meadow, brush and deep woods - cut through by roads. Deer love to eat the stuff that grows at these edges.

And, at Big Meadows, there are so-called human attractants: salt bins, illegal feeding by visitors and picnic grounds.

Along with a favorable browsing environment, there is a lack of effective predation. The cougars are gone, hunting is not permitted, and the few natural enemies the deer have, black bear and coyote, also find the pickin's easy in the area, so they don't prey much on the deer.

But the thriving deer are changing the local ecology. Rolf Gubler, the Biologist at the Park Headquarters in Luray, says "we estimate that [Big Meadows] could support up to about 100 deer per square mile - much higher than the usual forest 20 to 30 per square mile - without significant environmental impacts. But recent counts, including spotlight surveys, indicate 150 deer per square mile, which is too high."

Says Gubler, "We don't have what I would call good data, but we are observing deleterious effects including the loss of state-rare wildflowers like Canada burnet, blue flag iris, phlox buckleyei, leathery grapefern, yellow ladyslipper and stiff gentian.

"Often times at the top of the Blue Ridge you're seeing northern species at the southern limit of their range, and some of these are found in Virginia only in the Big Meadows area.

"And [because there are so many of them] the [deer] population has to browse outside of what they would normally eat. So even some non-deer-preferred flora are in danger of being lost. And things they don't eat, like hay-scented fern, black locust, white snakeroot and some exotics like ailanthus, are thriving in an ecosystem where they might otherwise be rare.

"Up there [at Big Meadows] you can see the clearly-defined browse lines from ungulates, like on gray dogwood, as a kind of line across the foliage. Scrubbed up to a certain point, then bark and growth above that. It almost looks like a stand of palm trees. This type of browsing greatly reduces most of the natural woody regeneration that should be taking place."

There is a core population of deer that stay at Big Meadows year round. Others - more adventurous - range down to Tanners Ridge and other places in the winter, where their population is reduced as they become targets of legal hunters. And there are cars, especially along the Rte 211 corridor, and poachers.

Says biologist Gubler, "Because it is such a favorable environment, at Big Meadows you see a lot of bucks, and there's damaging buck-rub on saplings - kills the trees, which are the source of new forest. In winter they eat some trees down to the root systems.

"We have photo documentation that they eat white pine in winter, and will browse on cedars - species they would not usually browse if the overpopulation had not reduced the usually available winter forage. Even Virginia pine, which is resinous and bitter, deer do not usually eat -- they will browse it down to the ground in winter.

"We're still gathering information - there is a deer population dynamics study in the works - on survival and movement patterns, all kinds of things, to determine the biological carrying capacity of the area."

Gubler says that once the study substantiates the damage, plans to thin the herd could include direct reduction by removal - not a hunt, a hunt is not possible under the charter of the park - and might include setting out food laced with contraceptive agents. "We might also use deer exclosures [plastic fencing] selectively, to protect threatened communities of flora.

"But any action is probably at least six years away. Even though we're sure of these effects from direct observation, they have to be supported by scientific documentation." (Dave Sagarin, February 23, 2004)

Editor's Note: Pictures by George Loper.

See also, Big Meadows, Shenandoah National Park Re-Opens Additional Facilities, and High Winds, Grazing Deer and Fall Foliage.