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Role Reversal

Due to a distant corporate decision, Fenway Park in Boston is about to be torn down and moved elsewhere. Residents immediately around the park think it’s a good idea because traffic and noise will be less.

Residents in the surrounding Boston area are appalled because they will miss traveling to the historic park. Even Maine citizens, longtime Red Sox fans, are taken aback. A group of them decides to investigate. They travel to Boston, look at the old park, talk to some residents, and decide to do something. They form a group called “Restore Fenway Park.” In Boston, the local residents are furious, believing that nobody “from away” should have a say in their affairs. The Maine residents counter that Fenway Park has meaning for many people, far and wide, because it symbolizes the beauty of long summer days listening to the games on the radio, or even a long drive to Boston to see the Sox themselves.

Robert F. Baldwin

Orono

DIF&W mind games

For 40 years I have supported Maine’s fish and wildlife managers unequivocally. I even supported them in the early days when the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife first started hiring them and they were known as biologists rather than managers. I supported them when they were less than popular with the sportsmen than they are today. I have always defended them and their programs against their adversaries when I was present at various social events and in private settings. In short, I have supported them and defended their management efforts at every turn of the road in spite of receiving undue criticism for doing so.

As the years have passed and as I have witnessed the results of wildlife management, so-called, from time to time, I’ve had suspicions. But as I believe in science and as I believed that wildlife management was a science, I either suppressed or cast those suspicions aside. There were times when I wanted to speak out and didn’t. I was fearful of offending the managers, some of whom were and still are my friends and acquaintances. As well, I often questioned my own conclusions of the issue under debate.

Yesterday (Friday), I attended a Sportsmen’s Congress held in Augusta where all the outdoor notables, or those who think they are, gathered to discuss various sportsmen topics. One of the featured speakers who sat at the head table was Gerry Lavigne, Maine’s most notable white-tailed deer manager. Mr. Lavigne commands a great deal of respect, as he should, for he has established a reputation among hunters and fellow managers of knowing more about the white-tailed deer than any other person in the world. Unquestionably, he has no equal in Maine and thus far no one has stepped forward to dispute that claim and that includes me. What I do dispute, though, is his ability to manage Maine’s deer herd, which is quite another matter.

Without demeaning Mr. Lavigne in any way, please let me tell you why and I’ll keep it as simple as I can. The first thing Gerry told us was that the deer kill was down 32 percent according to the preliminary tagging records. Then he proceeded to tell us that his projections of the harvest were way below what he expected. The question for the audience then became “why?”

If Mr. Lavigne’s deer population estimates are accurate – he claims they are accurate enough for management purposes – and Mr. Lavigne is the determinant of how many doe permits are issued and by micromanagement are specific to 30 deer management zones, why then was he so far off in his estimates of the 2001 deer kill? The answer is that Mr. Lavigne, through no fault of his, does not have the tools necessary to manage a deer population.

While Mr. Lavigne might have some of the necessary wildlife management tools, his toolbox is devoid of the two most important management tools that determine deer populations. The nongovernmental department they fall under is called Mother Nature and the inventoried names of the tools are weather and habitat. While Mr. Lavigne might be able to manage Maine’s deer herd on a short-term basis, it is Mother Nature who manages the deer over the long haul.

And Mother Nature is precisely what Mr. Lavigne fell back on to defend himself in his faulty prediction. He defended himself as a manager by saying that Maine experienced its seventh-harshest winter on record. If Mr. Lavigne knew that, and he admits he did, and if he knew the winter kill mortality and all the other causes of deer mortality, and he claims that he does, why then are his end-result figures so far adrift?

Ask Mr. Lavigne to show you a graph depicting Maine’s deer population over a period of 30 or 40 years and then you’ll see for yourself. It will show, as a graph will show in any other northern state at the end of the deer range, a line that rises and falls, usually abruptly, following the severity of the winters measured by temperature and snowfall.

If that isn’t convincing enough to prove the case, then I invite you to read what sportsmen say is the reason for being unsuccessful. Seldom do they admit the real reason. They often say the reason for their failure is, “buck deer are scarce and should be on the endangered species list in some areas of the state.” Regional biologists tell us that in their conversations with hunters, the most common laments expressed are less deer sign, weather too warm, bucks not rutting yet, posted land and the season is too early.”

A few hunters will also candidly admit they have been less than enthusiastic about hunting because of the never-ending scrutiny and roadblock checks conducted by the (Maine) Warden Service.

In my recent conclusion that deer management is folly in Maine, I am reminded by what a chief game warden said to me 20 years ago. His wisdom and knowledge were not to be taken lightly for he was also a highly respected sportsman of long standing.

He said, “Wildlife managers mostly manage their jobs and they managed the deer by what is referred to today as ‘paper deer management.'” At the time, I thought he was wrong. Today, I realize, even though it pains me to say it, he was right after all. But I would add one more comment to what he said. Today, wildlife managers also manage the minds of sportsmen.

Gerry Lavigne proved it to me yesterday (Friday) at the Sportsmen’s Congress.

William R. Randall

Winthrop