Wild deer are both an asset and a liability to the countryside. By browsing young trees and grazing ground vegetation, they threaten new woodlands planted for carbon capture and hamper achievement of biodiversity targets in established conservation woodlands; both are national priorities within Defra’s 25-year plan for the environment.
The Forestry Commission has drafted an England Deer Strategy to promote achievement of benefits and minimisation of the costs to society of the country’s deer populations via collaborative, landscape-scale deer impact management. However, as an evidence-based policy, it lacks information on the pattern of deer abundance across England and is not supported by knowledge of the size of deer populations.
This project involved the development of an online data-driven tool to map and quantify deer species abundance at a range of spatial scales, including the national scale.
The tool was integrated with Forestry Services’ Data Dashboard for use by their Deer Officers and was made publicly available to support delivery of the Strategy.
Unlike previous attempts to quantify national deer populations, the research used cutting-edge predictive tools to analyse a new and extensive dataset that has been collected by state-of-the-art drone surveys over large areas of the country.
This project was funded by the 2023–2024 Research England Policy Support Fund.
Contacts
Others involved
- British Deer Society