ESCANABA — What would you do if you learned about an environmental menace? Then, what if that menace was caused by something loveable and darling? Evidently, most of us do little.

This menace kills about 20 Michiganders each year and inflicts at least 400 million dollars of damage. Essential certification of the 20-billion-dollar forest industry comes into question.

In forests, bird factories are threatened. This menace partners with exotic plant species to prevent or reduce native trees from regenerating. Well-intentioned tree planting projects are foiled. Water quality is threatened along lakes and rivers. Home gardens and landscape plantings disappear during the night.

To help set the magnitude of this challenge, imagine planting a tree in your backyard with your kids. One day, you notice the tree has been “eaten” by something. Now, multiply that effect by several billion each year and that’s what’s happening in our forests.

Yes, all this is done by our much beloved deer herd, those delightful creatures that thrill the hearts of both the young and the old.

Deer present one of the most serious threats to forests, habitat, and water quality. In residential areas, deer chew through millions of dollars of plantings, sometimes to the point a harangued municipality will employ sharp-shooter programs. These manifest impacts have been tracked for decades and they’re growing more severe with time.

Why this imbalance? Well, it’s pretty much our own fault. Deer populations thrive in landscapes settled by people. Agriculture and fragmented forests allow deer numbers to expand. In parts of the state where there are few humans and mostly forest, deer populations are considerably thinner. Deep snow plays an important part, too. Two hundred years ago, deer were much lower in abundance and in balance with their environment. Because humans changed those dynamics, some see a responsibility or imperative to correct the current imbalances.

Hunting, of course, is a part of the solution but hunting pressure, alone, is not enough to control deer numbers. And, nearly half of Michigan’s forest is owned by individuals who don’t particularly want others hunting on their property. A hard winter or two, becoming increasingly rare, can also stymie population growth for a short time.

Hunters kill at least 200,000 deer each year, from a population of over two million. Even if a severe winter kills another 200,000, and adding 60,000 hit by cars, that’s still less than 25 percent of the population.

Deer productivity is relentless. The population recovers within a few years.

Who “owns” the deer? Across the United States, wildlife is owned by the citizenry, which was a revolutionary idea 200 years ago. In Michigan, that means the state government has the responsibility to manage deer. So, tongue-in-cheek, they could be called the “governor’s deer”.

The Natural Resources Commission (NRC) sets deer policy, which, by statute, the DNR carries out. The NRC is appointed by the governor and consists mostly of sportsmen, not foresters, or biologists, or resource management professionals. They’re good folk but have a poor track record in addressing deer overabundance and the manifest damage resulting from such. Not surprisingly, the hunting lobby is huge and influential. There’s no shortage of “politics” in deer management.

Hunters have long funded game management through license fees. The general citizenry pays little. Much of the DNR wildlife management budget comes from these hunters, although the hunting population is declining.

The federal Pittman-Robertson fund also pays for “hunting management” through the excise taxes on guns and ammunition. Interestingly, when the US President is a democrat, P-R funds run flush, and then drop when the US President is a republican.

If one “follows the money”, it is no surprise that wildlife management is largely driven by the hunting mindset of decades ago. This was a good strategy during the first half of the 1900s. However, an argument can be made that a strategy update is required to meet current environmental and social conditions.

The sciences of forestry and wildlife management are complex, with many tools in the toolbox. However, the driving forces of management policy are even more complex, and not generally based on the resource management sciences. Public sentiment towards deer, especially, runs a full spectrum of opinion and emotion.

Potential solutions exist to this environmental dilemma. The Michigan Society of American Foresters, and others, has quietly advocated for the adjustment of deer policy and have suggested a number of possible strategies. However, this “cry from the wilderness” faces a daunting bureaucracy and set of entrenched traditions.

Given the history of the last few decades, might we, as the public, close the barn door long after most of the horses have run away?