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I snapped this photo returning from town a short while ago. Believe it or not there are fourteen deer in this picture with a number bunched behind the group in the center. That is a lot of deer. Which is remarkable since the trees in the picture were all planted by my neighbor. He planted his trees in rows because he's farming trees. You'd think that if you machine-planted your trees in rows the wildlife would spurn them in favor of something more natural. Or native. Like old-growth forest. Or really anything else. Those rows are an affront. However, any tree farmer knows that old-growth forest doesn't sustain deer because deer are a creature of the edge and prefer younger, disturbed or regenerating forests. Same for plenty of other wildlife. Besides, all of the presettlement old growth forest was cut over in the mid-1800s so that white, Europeans could farm here. It has only been in the last three decades or so that the Conservation Reserve Program (1984 Reagan Farm Bill) encouraged farmers to take marginal, sensitive or highly-erodable farmland out of production and plant it into permanent cover for the benefit of wildlife. The side benefit being clean air, clean water and carbon storage.
Trouble is if you want to plant a couple of thousand or tens of thousands of trees you have to plant them by machine - in rows - so that you can nurture and maintain your little trees and curb the competing grasses and weeds until the little seedlings grow above the tops of the competition. Sure, I know that growing a row of trees rubs some people the wrong way and a very few might become apoplectic, mutter under their breath and call conservationists who engage in the practice all sorts of goofy names.
But after you complete a pre-commercial thinning - cutting of trees (gasp!) - it looks more natural. Following a couple of decades the maturing trees begin the process of natural reproduction and pretty soon it looks like any other forest. Some people just don't have any patience or appreciation for sustainable forestry. Or maybe they would rather look at a sterile corn field full of fertilizer and chemicals. There's just no accounting for tastes. But I digress.
Getting back to the deer - if you look carefully you might observe that they are of a subdued tone. The ruddy roan coats of summer are fading as the grey, outer guard hairs of winter begin to emerge. This biological transformation is triggered by the shortening days. Before too long it will lead to hormonal changes in both males (bucks) and females (does) and the breeding season (the rut) will kick into gear.
Around these parts hundreds and hundreds of acres of crappy farmland has been restored to a more natural (aside from the rows) condition. As a consequence a couple of things happened. There are a bunch of dead Belgian settlers who cleared this land spinning in their graves at this insult. And we have a deer problem.
Raising a toast to sustainable forestry.
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