Forvaltningsplan for deer-hunting i Virginia

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Draft VA Deer Management Plan
Deer Management
Augusta County
Lauren McKay

Deer hunting is an extremely popular past time in Virginia. While the economic impact of deer hunting in the state is around $250-million annually, deer also inflict millions of dollars in damage to crops.

Leaders from the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries are developing a State Deer Management Plan. The VDGIF is seeking public input until June 16th on the draft plan. Public Stakeholders consisting of hunters, people from agricultural communities, and even the Virginia Department of Transportation worked together on the plan.

The Draft Virginia Deer Management Plan outlines four areas for managing deer in the state through 2015. They are population, habitat, damage, and recreation. The plan gives goals, objectives, and strategies.

A major objective is to reduce deer population on private land in Shenandoah and Rockingham Counties and stabilize it in Augusta and Page counties. "In Rockingham County or Augusta County where there's a lot of national forest and a lot of issues there that are different than private land, we separate them out and have separate management units so the private land of Rockingham County has a different objective than the public land objective," says Nelson Lafon, Assistant Deer Project Leader.

On public land, the objectives are to stabilize deer populations in all local areas. The plan is to update these objectives every other year.

When creating the plan, the committee had to keep a lot in mind. "Once you start having fatalities, unfortunately from deer vehicle collisions, tolerance for deer goes down," says Lafon.

This creates some strong opinions. "There's certain areas where you have half the number of deer you have in Rockingham County and people think it's still too many and then there's other parts of the state where you have more deer than we have in Rockingham County and people think that it's not enough deer," says Lafon.

You can check out the Draft Virginia Deer Management Plan by visiting our website and following the links to the plan. There will also be a presentation to the Rockingham County Board of Supervisors at their meeting this Wednesday at 6:30.

.....nu OGSÅ ejer af en 243win :-)

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