Axis deer – potential to wreak havoc on Isle

BY ERIN MILLER | WEST HAWAII TODAY

The potential havoc axis deer could wreak on the Big Island is clear, a scientist said, if the animal isn’t eradicated.

“If we don’t, we’re going to have to explain to our children and grandchildren why we have a 10-foot fence around our yards,” said Jan Schipper, Big Island Invasive Species Committee project manager. “It’s a bad species to have on an island like our island.”

The committee, a partnership of community organizations, partly funded by state and other grants, is spearheading the efforts to learn how many deer are now living on the Big Island, where those animals are, and eventually, what the island community may do to eradicate the invasive species. The state Department of Land and Natural Resources confirmed the deer’s presence on the Big Island in May.

Schipper said DLNR’s Division of Forestry and Wildlife sought his committee’s help, in part because the committee is better suited to take on deer. Schipper’s background includes such searches for hard-to-find animals, in particular tracking and studying jaguar in Costa Rica.

“We took over the project because this was a much bigger issue than any single agency could manage,” he added. “This is our niche.”

And unlike with the committee’s unsuccessful efforts to eradicate the coqui frog, the axis deer’s presence has been noted early, perhaps soon enough to eliminate the animal, Schipper said. That’s only feasible, though, if the island’s whole human population understands the negative impacts the deer can have, and why those impacts outweigh the relatively small benefit of deer hunting, he added.

To understand the devastation axis deer may cause, Schipper pointed to Molokai, where no home garden is either unfenced or without a guard dog to drive away wandering deer. During a recent Maui drought, deer banded together in “super herds” of 500 to 1,000 animals, clearing pastures of any greenery. That led to the starvation death of thousands of cattle on that island, Schipper said.

The Big Island doesn’t have a large enough hunting base, and the island has too many places for the deer to thrive, to allow even a few deer to remain, he said.

Schipper said a few of the deer’s characteristics make them more destructive than other feral animals. The animals are native to a region of India subject to monsoon rains and droughts. Axis deer there must evade natural predators, including tigers, they don’t face here.

“They’re a lot more hardy,” he said. “They’re perfectly adapted to high rain and high drought.”

The animals’ high reproduction rate increases the population by about 33 percent a year. On Molokai, nearly everyone eats deer on a regular basis, because the animals are so common, he said.

“Almost nowhere on this island is easily accessible (hunting area) like Molokai,” he said. “Eventually, we would have deer everywhere.”

Just how many deer are on the island is unknown, Schipper said. His office captured an image of a deer, using a remote game camera, about six months ago. Until then, he said, no matter how many hunters said they had seen the animals, not everyone was convinced.

“It was all rumor,” he said. “It was almost like we were looking for Bigfoot.”

The committee has cut back on how many cameras it has positioned looking for deer, because people kept stealing them, Schipper said. Axis deer are forest-edge dwellers, so hiding a camera deep in the woods, where people might not come across the cameras, isn’t possible, he added.

Schipper declined to provide specific locations where the deer have been seen, or evidence, such as footprints, antlers or scat, of their presence has been noted. He said herds are suspected to live in parts of Ka’u, in higher elevations above Saddle Road and Kailua-Kona, and in North Kohala. His office has received two reports of drivers hitting deer, but has yet to see a deer carcass to confirm the reports.

Anyone who wants to report seeing a deer may call the Big Island Invasive Species Committee at 933-3340.

emiller@westhawaiitoday.com